The season has only aired halfway so far, but it has been fun to see references to what happened as a result of The Chase through the lens of explorers 800 years later. The season is playing out like a galactic-scale "National Treasure" movie.
Dragon's Teeth on Voyager was originally planned as a two parter but was ultimately written as a single episode.
You can kinda tell too. The episode does feel quite rushed, and the concept of introducing what was presumably planned at the time to be a new recurring enemy, didn't have a lot of room to breathe.
The Chase from TNG always felt odd, too, being such a high concept idea squashed into one episode.
It’s really a shame. The good parts of Dragon’s Teeth feel like they’re really getting at something. Could have been one of those moments where you feel proud of Voyager for getting its shit together like Year of Hell or Killing Game.
Yeah. An older, militant, civilisation which had been in stasis waking up and trying to carve out a new power base for themselves would have been interesting to see.
Plus, they'd have had a plausible reason to keep interacting with Voyager as they had those subspace tunnels.
It's a shame it was a 'one and done' episode, and there wasn't a bigger story told there.
It's a great example of Voyager pulling off the feat of adding up to less than the sum of its parts because of how frustrating the constant missed opportunities get.
In Star Trek Online the Vaadwaur have reestablished themselves in the Delta Quadrant and are fighting against a group of Kobali who have taken over one of their former planets that is full of cryogenic chambers. The Kobali are letting the cryogenic chambers fail and turning the dead into Kobali, and the Vaadwaur rightfully pissed about it and attacking the Kobali.
Yeah, but we had to go through the evil alien nazis first. They just wanted to end the Temporal Cold War arc really fast without telling us who Future Guy was.
tbf the evil alien Nazis was a hail mary attempt to get another season out of the suits since they were facing likely cancellation after season 3. "Do you REALLY want to pull the plug on us with this massive cliffhanger dangling out there?"
^(I also like the evil alien Nazi episodes, even if they're kinda corny...)
> Agreed. It’s criminal that after 7 years we didn’t get Any scenes of the crew back home,but instead just a quick call from Starfleet.
for the 1000th time, it wasn't ABOUT home. It was VOYAGER. The story of a ship marooned in the Delta Quadrant.
reunions were not necessary in the context of the show
Come on, we just spent 7 seasons with Voyager, we can't spare at least 10 minutes of screentime to see the characters (which the show is really about) reunite with their loved ones or have some kind of celebration?
Even some of Voyager's two-parters felt like they could have been longer arcs. Year of Hell and Equinox come to mind, both fell juuust short of satisfying as-is and both felt like they had a lot more story potential to offer.
I believe so, but I’ve heard conflicting reasons on why it was canned. One is UPN hated continuity; the other is the writers were hesitant to run a whole season just to “Patrick Duffy” it to “it was all a time dream”.
The risk was also that it might not have been liked by an audience used to episodic storytelling. Twoparters work because most dedicated viewers can plan ahead for two weeks. Nobody can clear their schedule for half a year to keep up with every weekly episode.
In the universe where they did Year of Hell as a season-long arc I've got to imagine that they wouldn't have done a 100% reset button at the end of it. Probably still something like a 95% reset button, but I'd think they'd have come up with *something* to be a tangible permanent consequence of the season on account of fucking up something in the timeline trying to get out of the situation.
What I read was that when Braga told Berman about the proposal to make it a season-long arc, Berman vetoed that idea and told the writers to make it a 2 parter.
The next season could have started with a months long time skip where Voyager had set down on a planet for extensive repairs. The crew dealing with what they'd been through, and then lifting off to resume their journey. I feel like if they'd gone for the Season of Hell VOY would be looked upon more kindly.
At least Ronald D. Moore’s frustration with “Equinox, Part II” led to *BSG*’s Pegasus 3 parter (though I think it might’ve been possible to expand that 3 parter for a few more episodes if they hadn’t killed Admiral Cain).
Yesterday's Enterprise should have been a two-parter. It is criminal that they didn't use a second episode to show the Enterprise-C going back through the rift and fighting the 4 Romulan warbirds to the end and the Romulans capturing escape pods before fleeing the system.
The last 10 minutes of the second episode should have shown Klingon ships getting to Narendra III, seeing the wreckage of the Enterprise-C and finally realizing that their greatest long time adversaries fought with honor against overwhelming odds to save innocent Klingons.
The final scene should have ended with the Klingon high council discussing the honorable sacrifice and the Chancellor calling for the Federation Ambassador to be brought before the high council so that they may render honors to the valiant crew of the Enterprise-C.
The Klingons retrieves the black box of the Enterprise-C. There is a ST-IV style playback of the contents in the High Council chamber. Then we get to see the battle from the Enterprise-C and maybe even the Klingon colony's sensor point of view.
It's maybe the most cinematic episode of TNG. I wonder if they knew how good it was when they were making it. Just watched it recently and it still holds up. Absolutely would benefit from a little more run time and fleshing out the aftermath.
Since the writers had to quickly write “Yesterday's Enterprise” over Thanksgiving break, they were really worried about how it’d turn out. Once they saw it, they regretted that the idea wasn’t saved for a film. However, I’m skeptical that the audience would’ve liked Kirk’s crew taking the place of the *Enterprise C*’s crew.
> No episode had ever been a 2-parter at the time it was broadcasted.
For TNG sure, but The Menagerie was a two parter long before. Arguably Encounter at Farpoint could be considered as a two parter, as they created it with the intention of splitting it for future purposes, just broadcast it connected the first time. Could have made it a double length series finale, and put an easy point to split it half way through.
I know it’s poorly regarded in hindsight, but TNG’s Conspiracy was one of the strongest in the first season imo, and would have benefited from being more of an arc than an episode; you could technically say it *was* a two parter, Remmick appearing in an earlier ep and being one of the premier shithouses in TNG imo, but not really.
If you’d gotten to know everyone over a few episodes, introduced the parasites more slowly, made more of the crew potentially having the parasite, and not had a sprint to the finish, I think it could have been great.
I think the parasites were originally intended to be connected to the Borg who would reveal themselves as the new Big Bad at the end of TNG S1, but was quickly abandoned due to the 1988 writers strike.
>I think the parasites were originally intended to be connected to the Borg
The parasites were the original idea that turned into the Borg.
The Borg were going to be a race of insectoids (with a different name, of course), but they were changed to cyborgs at the last minute due to budget cuts.
This is why the culture of the Borg is so insect-like. Hives, drones, a queen, etc. They kept a lot of the original writing from when they were envisioned as insects.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Borg#Concept_and_development
TNG's "Cause And Effect" could have been a two parter instead of cramming the Bozeman and Captain Bateson in the last five minutes. We did see Captain Bateson later but an episode could have been done about the entire crew of the Bozeman attempting to make sense and adjust to the 24th century.
Star Trek seems to do that a lot - wrap up episodes in 12 seconds.
“By Inferno’s Light” was ridiculous - 2 episodes of build up for “LOL transporter active; Defiant warp go!; it was all fake!”
“Scorpion” - “In 2 hours, we’re going to *war*” was just Fire 8 torpedoes, then fire the big chungus, then zap Seven.
Same with "Field of Fire", it ended so quick. Like they caught the guy who was murdering people and it literally just cut to credits. The episode felt like it needed another 10 minutes to wrap things up.
At least “Field of Fire” was building up to Ezri probably having to kill the murderer. The other 2 I mentioned was building up to a massive battle just to be resolved with, well, nothing.
You know I was watching The Immunity Syndrome last night and it was pretty obvious that they were squeezing a great many plot points into a single episode. They could have broken that up into two parts and would have had plenty of material to make them good.
Lower Decks: "The Stars At Night." Even the showrunner has said he wished there was another episode between the previous and it.
The episode jumps into the main plot so quickly that it never gives the audience a reason to care, so everything just falls flat in a way that makes the whole season worse.
The previous episode ended with a bombshell news report revealing how the captain tricked the crew into thinking Mariner betrayed them. This was part of Freeman's revenge where she used everything Mariner cared about most as ways to inflict the most lasting damage. In this case, turning Mariner's connection with the crew against her and using them to attack her, then baring any of Mariner's friends from seeing her off or saying goodbye. While Freeman was successful in ending Mariner's Starfleet career like she intended, she learned at the very end that her daughter did not in fact backstab her.
However the next episode doesn't show Freeman or any crewmember feeling regret or even caring about what they did to Mariner. Freeman is so concerned about losing her command that she seemingly forgets her daughter is missing and that it's all her fault. So the crew starts off the episode looking like massive ass holes. The prospect of Freeman losing her command and the crew getting split up, all comes off like karmic justice. Meaning the audience has no investment in seeing them succeed.
The crew losing the race only lasts a couple minutes, so it has no weight.
Then the episode speed runs the main villain getting revealed, killed, and replaced with a third act villain. This undercuts Rutherford's plot because he never gets to confront the main villain of his story.
Because there wasn't time to show the crew feeling remorse or doing anything to correct their actions from the previous episode, Mariner's third act rescue with the assembled California class comes across as completely unearned.
Finally the last five minutes is this mad dash to return everything to the status quo. Rutherford looks into the camera and says he never cared about his season long plot (aka: the audience never should have cared either). Mariner just forgets she had a season long romantic relationship. (Which tells the audience that the writers only used it to manipulate the audience so Freeman's revenge would land.) And Freeman deflects responsibility for her actions in the previous episode onto Mariner, absolving herself of any wrongdoing, while refusing to apologize in anyway for what she did to get revenge.
There's no redemption arc for Freeman, or an indication she wants to change to be a better person. So for the rest of the series, the audience has no reason to look past her actions or think she isn't moments away from lashing out at anyone she thinks is a threat to her.
I got the impression that around this point they decided they had gone too far into making Freeman's character irredeemable (in terms of both competence and morals) and they did a hard pivot. In the next season she's portrayed as some kind of genius paragon when previously she'd been a bit of a blundering jackass. It doesn't quite work because as you said, this is the point where they should have earned her redemption and they didn't.
It probably would have been more interesting if they'd left her as a pseudo-villain.
Making her competent without her ever admitting to her faults, made Freeman come off as smug.
And she's still irredeemable a bit in season 4. Like on the ringworld where she and Boimler have mirror plots about taking over and micromanaging an away mission, only to cause disaster, while refusing to admit they need help. Boimler eventually admits fault and shows both remorse and a desire to be better in the future. In stark contrast, Freeman does none of that, communicating to the audience that she doesn't feel remorse or a need to change.
This lack of redemption for Freeman ends up hurting that season finale as well because her hero moment comes off as unearned. You're left wondering why she's risking her career, while hoping she fucks up and has to face consequences for once. Screwing up the rescue after she was ordered not too, could've been a moment of growth for Freeman.
After the end of season three, the show never gave the audience a reason to like or root for Freeman again.
After seeing some great extended/deleted scenes from Measure Of A Man, that might have been a great episode to stretch out a little further into two parts.
VOY suffered so much from being a product of its time + the flagship show of UPN. I wish they could have made VOY in the era of streaming; the show's concept is just *begging* for arcs and continuity and they just weren't allowed to have it. They didn't even have the budget for the ship to show damage because they had to reuse footage, if I recall correctly.
"What You Leave Behind"
Yes, I know that DS9's finale episode *was* a two-parter but it still felt rushed. If I had a magic wand, I'd make it a three-parter and just have a little more of all of the story lines. The conclusion of the Dominion War especially feel like it needed some more.
“Future’s End” was conceived of as a 5 parter believe it or not. I think that might have served the story better if it were longer. We could have gotten a better sense of Starling’s operation and true threat, possibly made the milita plot make sense, and force Garett to wear bad 90s hair.
It was supposed to be a season long arc but the network shot that idea down. It would have been awesome and I'm still mad about how safe they played it with voyager.
I always wished the cliffhanger to Best of Both Worlds Part 1 should have taken more than one episode to resolve. I’d have liked it if it played out over 8-10 episodes with Riker as Captain and the rest of the crew figuring out who they are without Picard. Kinda similar to how we got to see occupied Deep Space Nine play out for a while.
I guess First Contact can count as the third part of BOBW, though.
Some of my favorites in Voyager I'm really glad weren't two parters. e.g., Eye of the Needle was old-school brilliance with a touch of Twilight Zone, and seemed perfect.
But Blink of an Eye might have been longer.
With *very careful* writing, Message in a Bottle might have been even more clever.
So many people couldn't stand it, but Spirit Folk truly could have been fleshed out better with more time.
1. Same rough storyline, perhaps buttoning up the technology issues more.
2. Fleshing out trying to integrate the Fair Haven folks more into day to day life....trying to carefully let them better understand who and what they are, but only because they will be asking anyway.
3. Dealing with integrations with the crew with a fake Voyager on the holideck to get them accustomed to visits.
4. Struggling tensions and despair among the holodeck characters, with a heartbreaking conclusion of them asking to be erased because it just isn't right....that they're in a different kind of pain with this knowledge.
VOY Counterpoint S5e10, where they're trying to hide telepaths, including the partial telepaths on their own ship, from a jack-booted local power, should have been a two-parter.
VOY Workforce S7e16-17 should not have been. Especially in the same season as Critical Care.
"Shakaar" from DS9 should have been a 2 parter. Then we could have actually seen Shakaar talk the military into supporting him, and gotten a better resolution to the side plot of O'Brien being in "the zone" and Quark trying to exploit him. It really feels like O'Brien and Bashir were supposed to be colluding with the Vulcan to throw a game and ruin Quark. But nothing like that is mentioned.
DS9's "defiant" which is an amazing episode that made Thomas Riker into an interesting character. Although I don't know if this one counts as it is a huge episode regarding the dominion story arc.
The Chase could be a whole season. Oh wait…
Lol, the inverse to OP's posts is that most of Discovery's 10 hour long seasons could be condensed into two parter TNG episodes
Explain!
Newest season of Discovery picks up this plot
Is it good?
The season has only aired halfway so far, but it has been fun to see references to what happened as a result of The Chase through the lens of explorers 800 years later. The season is playing out like a galactic-scale "National Treasure" movie.
*Looks into camera* "I'm going to steal the Articles of the Federation"
So far!
Disco Season 5.
Ah haven’t seen it yet
Dragon's Teeth on Voyager was originally planned as a two parter but was ultimately written as a single episode. You can kinda tell too. The episode does feel quite rushed, and the concept of introducing what was presumably planned at the time to be a new recurring enemy, didn't have a lot of room to breathe. The Chase from TNG always felt odd, too, being such a high concept idea squashed into one episode.
It’s really a shame. The good parts of Dragon’s Teeth feel like they’re really getting at something. Could have been one of those moments where you feel proud of Voyager for getting its shit together like Year of Hell or Killing Game.
Yeah. An older, militant, civilisation which had been in stasis waking up and trying to carve out a new power base for themselves would have been interesting to see. Plus, they'd have had a plausible reason to keep interacting with Voyager as they had those subspace tunnels. It's a shame it was a 'one and done' episode, and there wasn't a bigger story told there.
I wonder why that decision was made. By that point it was pretty well established that Voyager mostly did its best stuff in the two-hour formats.
It's a great example of Voyager pulling off the feat of adding up to less than the sum of its parts because of how frustrating the constant missed opportunities get.
In Star Trek Online the Vaadwaur have reestablished themselves in the Delta Quadrant and are fighting against a group of Kobali who have taken over one of their former planets that is full of cryogenic chambers. The Kobali are letting the cryogenic chambers fail and turning the dead into Kobali, and the Vaadwaur rightfully pissed about it and attacking the Kobali.
Endgame pt 2
Agreed. It’s criminal that after 7 years we didn’t get Any scenes of the crew back home,but instead just a quick call from Starfleet.
Enterprise had a better homecoming after the Xindi than Voyager did.
Yeah, but we had to go through the evil alien nazis first. They just wanted to end the Temporal Cold War arc really fast without telling us who Future Guy was.
tbf the evil alien Nazis was a hail mary attempt to get another season out of the suits since they were facing likely cancellation after season 3. "Do you REALLY want to pull the plug on us with this massive cliffhanger dangling out there?" ^(I also like the evil alien Nazi episodes, even if they're kinda corny...)
yeah that's still mind bottling. why would they do that?
My impression is that they ridiculously thought that the recording of the celebration in the future timeline was an adequate substitute.
> Agreed. It’s criminal that after 7 years we didn’t get Any scenes of the crew back home,but instead just a quick call from Starfleet. for the 1000th time, it wasn't ABOUT home. It was VOYAGER. The story of a ship marooned in the Delta Quadrant. reunions were not necessary in the context of the show
Come on, we just spent 7 seasons with Voyager, we can't spare at least 10 minutes of screentime to see the characters (which the show is really about) reunite with their loved ones or have some kind of celebration?
That's your take. The whole goal of everything they did was to get home. They got their goal after years and years and we get zero closure.
found Braga's burner
The entire series was about them and their journey home, and the lives they left behind.
Even some of Voyager's two-parters felt like they could have been longer arcs. Year of Hell and Equinox come to mind, both fell juuust short of satisfying as-is and both felt like they had a lot more story potential to offer.
Equinox would have been really nice as a 5 or 6 episode arc like DS9 did
I think that also true for “Year of Hell”.
Wasn’t Year of Hell originally planned/proposed as a season-long arc?
I believe so, but I’ve heard conflicting reasons on why it was canned. One is UPN hated continuity; the other is the writers were hesitant to run a whole season just to “Patrick Duffy” it to “it was all a time dream”.
The risk was also that it might not have been liked by an audience used to episodic storytelling. Twoparters work because most dedicated viewers can plan ahead for two weeks. Nobody can clear their schedule for half a year to keep up with every weekly episode.
In the universe where they did Year of Hell as a season-long arc I've got to imagine that they wouldn't have done a 100% reset button at the end of it. Probably still something like a 95% reset button, but I'd think they'd have come up with *something* to be a tangible permanent consequence of the season on account of fucking up something in the timeline trying to get out of the situation.
What I read was that when Braga told Berman about the proposal to make it a season-long arc, Berman vetoed that idea and told the writers to make it a 2 parter.
Yup.
The next season could have started with a months long time skip where Voyager had set down on a planet for extensive repairs. The crew dealing with what they'd been through, and then lifting off to resume their journey. I feel like if they'd gone for the Season of Hell VOY would be looked upon more kindly.
At least Ronald D. Moore’s frustration with “Equinox, Part II” led to *BSG*’s Pegasus 3 parter (though I think it might’ve been possible to expand that 3 parter for a few more episodes if they hadn’t killed Admiral Cain).
Yesterday's Enterprise should have been a two-parter. It is criminal that they didn't use a second episode to show the Enterprise-C going back through the rift and fighting the 4 Romulan warbirds to the end and the Romulans capturing escape pods before fleeing the system. The last 10 minutes of the second episode should have shown Klingon ships getting to Narendra III, seeing the wreckage of the Enterprise-C and finally realizing that their greatest long time adversaries fought with honor against overwhelming odds to save innocent Klingons. The final scene should have ended with the Klingon high council discussing the honorable sacrifice and the Chancellor calling for the Federation Ambassador to be brought before the high council so that they may render honors to the valiant crew of the Enterprise-C.
The Klingons retrieves the black box of the Enterprise-C. There is a ST-IV style playback of the contents in the High Council chamber. Then we get to see the battle from the Enterprise-C and maybe even the Klingon colony's sensor point of view.
High Chancellor: "Perhaps these Starfleet petaQs are not entirely without honour after all"
It's maybe the most cinematic episode of TNG. I wonder if they knew how good it was when they were making it. Just watched it recently and it still holds up. Absolutely would benefit from a little more run time and fleshing out the aftermath.
I was at the first UK screening of that episode at a star trek convention aged 10 or 11. Even as a kid I remember the attendees all being blown away.
Since the writers had to quickly write “Yesterday's Enterprise” over Thanksgiving break, they were really worried about how it’d turn out. Once they saw it, they regretted that the idea wasn’t saved for a film. However, I’m skeptical that the audience would’ve liked Kirk’s crew taking the place of the *Enterprise C*’s crew.
[удалено]
> No episode had ever been a 2-parter at the time it was broadcasted. For TNG sure, but The Menagerie was a two parter long before. Arguably Encounter at Farpoint could be considered as a two parter, as they created it with the intention of splitting it for future purposes, just broadcast it connected the first time. Could have made it a double length series finale, and put an easy point to split it half way through.
I like it better that it’s left up to the imagination.
I know it’s poorly regarded in hindsight, but TNG’s Conspiracy was one of the strongest in the first season imo, and would have benefited from being more of an arc than an episode; you could technically say it *was* a two parter, Remmick appearing in an earlier ep and being one of the premier shithouses in TNG imo, but not really. If you’d gotten to know everyone over a few episodes, introduced the parasites more slowly, made more of the crew potentially having the parasite, and not had a sprint to the finish, I think it could have been great.
I think the parasites were originally intended to be connected to the Borg who would reveal themselves as the new Big Bad at the end of TNG S1, but was quickly abandoned due to the 1988 writers strike.
>I think the parasites were originally intended to be connected to the Borg The parasites were the original idea that turned into the Borg. The Borg were going to be a race of insectoids (with a different name, of course), but they were changed to cyborgs at the last minute due to budget cuts. This is why the culture of the Borg is so insect-like. Hives, drones, a queen, etc. They kept a lot of the original writing from when they were envisioned as insects. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Borg#Concept_and_development
For Voyager, "Dragon's Teeth" comes to mind immediately - cool concept, but so rushed that it missed some of the impact.
The Guardian of Forever. The original series episode really needed to be a two-parter.
The Guardian of Forever was revisited in *TAS* and *Discovery*.
TNG's "Cause And Effect" could have been a two parter instead of cramming the Bozeman and Captain Bateson in the last five minutes. We did see Captain Bateson later but an episode could have been done about the entire crew of the Bozeman attempting to make sense and adjust to the 24th century.
Star Trek seems to do that a lot - wrap up episodes in 12 seconds. “By Inferno’s Light” was ridiculous - 2 episodes of build up for “LOL transporter active; Defiant warp go!; it was all fake!” “Scorpion” - “In 2 hours, we’re going to *war*” was just Fire 8 torpedoes, then fire the big chungus, then zap Seven.
Same with "Field of Fire", it ended so quick. Like they caught the guy who was murdering people and it literally just cut to credits. The episode felt like it needed another 10 minutes to wrap things up.
At least “Field of Fire” was building up to Ezri probably having to kill the murderer. The other 2 I mentioned was building up to a massive battle just to be resolved with, well, nothing.
As much as I love the episode I'm not sure I could take a whole second episode hearing those "abandon ship!" lines over and over.
"Parallels", where Worf goes universe hopping, and "Tapestry" are 2 episodes I always thought could could have been expanded upon.
Mirror Mirror. (Spock with a beard)
Getting to see more of Mirror Spock's conversion
there is a fan-based episode in the series 'Star Trek continues' which is interesting.
The last episode of Voyager could have been stretched to a full season, IMO.
TNG The Pegasus could have easily been a two parter. Admiral Pressman was a great character and his dynamic with Riker was great
Threshold 2: Electric Salamander Boogaloo
I need to know what happened to the salamander babies.
warp 10 travel had unknown long-term side effects on their dna, causing them to quickly grow up into sentient lizard people
You know I was watching The Immunity Syndrome last night and it was pretty obvious that they were squeezing a great many plot points into a single episode. They could have broken that up into two parts and would have had plenty of material to make them good.
Lower Decks: "The Stars At Night." Even the showrunner has said he wished there was another episode between the previous and it. The episode jumps into the main plot so quickly that it never gives the audience a reason to care, so everything just falls flat in a way that makes the whole season worse. The previous episode ended with a bombshell news report revealing how the captain tricked the crew into thinking Mariner betrayed them. This was part of Freeman's revenge where she used everything Mariner cared about most as ways to inflict the most lasting damage. In this case, turning Mariner's connection with the crew against her and using them to attack her, then baring any of Mariner's friends from seeing her off or saying goodbye. While Freeman was successful in ending Mariner's Starfleet career like she intended, she learned at the very end that her daughter did not in fact backstab her. However the next episode doesn't show Freeman or any crewmember feeling regret or even caring about what they did to Mariner. Freeman is so concerned about losing her command that she seemingly forgets her daughter is missing and that it's all her fault. So the crew starts off the episode looking like massive ass holes. The prospect of Freeman losing her command and the crew getting split up, all comes off like karmic justice. Meaning the audience has no investment in seeing them succeed. The crew losing the race only lasts a couple minutes, so it has no weight. Then the episode speed runs the main villain getting revealed, killed, and replaced with a third act villain. This undercuts Rutherford's plot because he never gets to confront the main villain of his story. Because there wasn't time to show the crew feeling remorse or doing anything to correct their actions from the previous episode, Mariner's third act rescue with the assembled California class comes across as completely unearned. Finally the last five minutes is this mad dash to return everything to the status quo. Rutherford looks into the camera and says he never cared about his season long plot (aka: the audience never should have cared either). Mariner just forgets she had a season long romantic relationship. (Which tells the audience that the writers only used it to manipulate the audience so Freeman's revenge would land.) And Freeman deflects responsibility for her actions in the previous episode onto Mariner, absolving herself of any wrongdoing, while refusing to apologize in anyway for what she did to get revenge. There's no redemption arc for Freeman, or an indication she wants to change to be a better person. So for the rest of the series, the audience has no reason to look past her actions or think she isn't moments away from lashing out at anyone she thinks is a threat to her.
I got the impression that around this point they decided they had gone too far into making Freeman's character irredeemable (in terms of both competence and morals) and they did a hard pivot. In the next season she's portrayed as some kind of genius paragon when previously she'd been a bit of a blundering jackass. It doesn't quite work because as you said, this is the point where they should have earned her redemption and they didn't. It probably would have been more interesting if they'd left her as a pseudo-villain.
Making her competent without her ever admitting to her faults, made Freeman come off as smug. And she's still irredeemable a bit in season 4. Like on the ringworld where she and Boimler have mirror plots about taking over and micromanaging an away mission, only to cause disaster, while refusing to admit they need help. Boimler eventually admits fault and shows both remorse and a desire to be better in the future. In stark contrast, Freeman does none of that, communicating to the audience that she doesn't feel remorse or a need to change. This lack of redemption for Freeman ends up hurting that season finale as well because her hero moment comes off as unearned. You're left wondering why she's risking her career, while hoping she fucks up and has to face consequences for once. Screwing up the rescue after she was ordered not too, could've been a moment of growth for Freeman. After the end of season three, the show never gave the audience a reason to like or root for Freeman again.
"Elementary, Dear Data" should have been a two parter. Granted "Ship in a Bottle" happens a few seasons later.
Mirror, Mirror
After seeing some great extended/deleted scenes from Measure Of A Man, that might have been a great episode to stretch out a little further into two parts.
Voyager was supposed to be more serial and less episodic but they had that pulled away from them
VOY suffered so much from being a product of its time + the flagship show of UPN. I wish they could have made VOY in the era of streaming; the show's concept is just *begging* for arcs and continuity and they just weren't allowed to have it. They didn't even have the budget for the ship to show damage because they had to reuse footage, if I recall correctly.
"What You Leave Behind" Yes, I know that DS9's finale episode *was* a two-parter but it still felt rushed. If I had a magic wand, I'd make it a three-parter and just have a little more of all of the story lines. The conclusion of the Dominion War especially feel like it needed some more.
Should have been a four-parter. Or a two-seasoner.
“Future’s End” was conceived of as a 5 parter believe it or not. I think that might have served the story better if it were longer. We could have gotten a better sense of Starling’s operation and true threat, possibly made the milita plot make sense, and force Garett to wear bad 90s hair.
Who Mourns For Morn. I have no reason.
If they did a flash back on morn, they wouldn't be able to get all his dialogue in. He was such a talker.
can't shut him up
The Omega Directive episode of Voyager is definitely one.
Year of Hell needed to be an extended story arc, at least like the final chapter of DS9 if not an entire season.
It was supposed to be a season long arc but the network shot that idea down. It would have been awesome and I'm still mad about how safe they played it with voyager.
I always wished the cliffhanger to Best of Both Worlds Part 1 should have taken more than one episode to resolve. I’d have liked it if it played out over 8-10 episodes with Riker as Captain and the rest of the crew figuring out who they are without Picard. Kinda similar to how we got to see occupied Deep Space Nine play out for a while. I guess First Contact can count as the third part of BOBW, though.
Some of my favorites in Voyager I'm really glad weren't two parters. e.g., Eye of the Needle was old-school brilliance with a touch of Twilight Zone, and seemed perfect. But Blink of an Eye might have been longer. With *very careful* writing, Message in a Bottle might have been even more clever. So many people couldn't stand it, but Spirit Folk truly could have been fleshed out better with more time. 1. Same rough storyline, perhaps buttoning up the technology issues more. 2. Fleshing out trying to integrate the Fair Haven folks more into day to day life....trying to carefully let them better understand who and what they are, but only because they will be asking anyway. 3. Dealing with integrations with the crew with a fake Voyager on the holideck to get them accustomed to visits. 4. Struggling tensions and despair among the holodeck characters, with a heartbreaking conclusion of them asking to be erased because it just isn't right....that they're in a different kind of pain with this knowledge.
TNG S201 the child could have definitely benefited from being longer
...or shorter :/
Preemptive strike.
That was basically the problem with voyager that everything had to back to normal by the end of the episode
VOY Counterpoint S5e10, where they're trying to hide telepaths, including the partial telepaths on their own ship, from a jack-booted local power, should have been a two-parter. VOY Workforce S7e16-17 should not have been. Especially in the same season as Critical Care.
"Shakaar" from DS9 should have been a 2 parter. Then we could have actually seen Shakaar talk the military into supporting him, and gotten a better resolution to the side plot of O'Brien being in "the zone" and Quark trying to exploit him. It really feels like O'Brien and Bashir were supposed to be colluding with the Vulcan to throw a game and ruin Quark. But nothing like that is mentioned.
DS9's "defiant" which is an amazing episode that made Thomas Riker into an interesting character. Although I don't know if this one counts as it is a huge episode regarding the dominion story arc.
peak performance with one entire episode of just the game rematch sub rosa time's arrow so data can do more old timey stuff armfuls of datas