While DS9 was spending its 30th Anniversary money "Forrest Gumping" its cast into a meticulous and affectionate tribute to The Original Series, "Voyager" went the Special Guest Star route and recruited George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, Michael Ansara and as much of the supporting cast of "The Undiscovered Country" as we would remember. In theory, it was a fun idea (certainly TNG had luck with the TOS casting stunt a few times), but the execution was sloppy, dramatically inert and certainly underwhelming even as an average "Voyager" episode, to say nothing for an anniversary celebration.
The basic plot is uninteresting - Tuvok (already a raised flag, his was not one of the strongest characters) has memories of bad green screen effects of a girl falling off a cliff that are driving him nuts. Rooting out the memory in his mind, he and Janeway re-remember his first mission aboard the Excelsior during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." Thus, the events between scenes when we saw the Excelsior in the film are brought to light. Sulu and Rand have a couple character moments but there's nothing compelling about the mission Sulu goes on - to say it is unimaginative and full of recent modern Trek clichés like incremental percentage-weakened shields, combustible gas, anomalies, defying logic and regulations is putting it aptly. Hardly befits the clever and rather fresh take on Trek of Nicholas Meyer's film when put to comparison. Tuvok's affliction is given copious amounts of technobabble worrying by the Doctor which raises the dramatic stakes by less than zero, and everything is resolved in a way that (typically, for the talented but not detail oriented Brannon Braga) actually totally contradicts the very movie it is meant to attentively flesh out.
The main problem just comes down to the fact that George Takei was brought back to Star Trek merely to spend half of his time reenacting scenes from "Star Trek VI" or playing the same dry scenes over and over again while Tim Russ and Kate Mulgrew whisper about the day's boring events in the foreground or background. What I would have given to see an original adventure for Captain Sulu that made better use of these actors (even the wooden Grace Lee Whitney deserved a little better than she got, but she at least she was allowed to be on more than one set). Sulu and Janeway don't even have a satisfying meeting - Janeway goes out of her way to ignore him when the opportunity arises. The "emotional" climax of the film is full of bad FX and bad drama.
Season 3 of "Voyager" is actually rather fun, but to this day I still consider "Flashback" one of "Voyager's" most damning missteps. For all the fun it was to bring back those characters, it was squandered with a lazy script that did little to advance any of the characters, laughably undermined continuity it had to pay attention to and celebrated the 30th Anniversary in a way that didn't inspire much confidence in where the franchise was going.
The basic plot is uninteresting - Tuvok (already a raised flag, his was not one of the strongest characters) has memories of bad green screen effects of a girl falling off a cliff that are driving him nuts. Rooting out the memory in his mind, he and Janeway re-remember his first mission aboard the Excelsior during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." Thus, the events between scenes when we saw the Excelsior in the film are brought to light. Sulu and Rand have a couple character moments but there's nothing compelling about the mission Sulu goes on - to say it is unimaginative and full of recent modern Trek clichés like incremental percentage-weakened shields, combustible gas, anomalies, defying logic and regulations is putting it aptly. Hardly befits the clever and rather fresh take on Trek of Nicholas Meyer's film when put to comparison. Tuvok's affliction is given copious amounts of technobabble worrying by the Doctor which raises the dramatic stakes by less than zero, and everything is resolved in a way that (typically, for the talented but not detail oriented Brannon Braga) actually totally contradicts the very movie it is meant to attentively flesh out.
The main problem just comes down to the fact that George Takei was brought back to Star Trek merely to spend half of his time reenacting scenes from "Star Trek VI" or playing the same dry scenes over and over again while Tim Russ and Kate Mulgrew whisper about the day's boring events in the foreground or background. What I would have given to see an original adventure for Captain Sulu that made better use of these actors (even the wooden Grace Lee Whitney deserved a little better than she got, but she at least she was allowed to be on more than one set). Sulu and Janeway don't even have a satisfying meeting - Janeway goes out of her way to ignore him when the opportunity arises. The "emotional" climax of the film is full of bad FX and bad drama.
Season 3 of "Voyager" is actually rather fun, but to this day I still consider "Flashback" one of "Voyager's" most damning missteps. For all the fun it was to bring back those characters, it was squandered with a lazy script that did little to advance any of the characters, laughably undermined continuity it had to pay attention to and celebrated the 30th Anniversary in a way that didn't inspire much confidence in where the franchise was going.