Brannon Braga always says "what was I thinking" when he discusses this episode. No way! In fact I liked it, quite a bit. But not for the reasons you are thinking.
Tom is a pilot first and foremost, on top of being a jerk most of the time. In this episode, it appears that he is spearheading a team that has been planning hard designing a shuttle that can do something extraordinary, and he is the man that will pilot this. This is the flight that will give him something that he has wanted since he was a child, a feeling of accomplishment by doing something nobody else has. He is very sincere in all of his efforts and his arguments with Captain Janeway award him the chance to do this thing. But he is almost prevented from doing it because The Doctor thinks he has developed some form of brain-measles. Fortunately, and because we know Tom Paris' character well by this point, he is able to talk himself back into the pilot's seat.
However, what begins as a quest to break an ultimate speed barrier, takes a sharp twist and "devolves" into insanityland.
And I have never laughed so hard for a Star Trek episode, ever!
People simply don't appreciate the humor of this episode, especially the non-standard and possibly unintentional (but probably, actually intentional) comic acting by Robert Duncan McNeil. He nails this, if he had not pulled out all of the stops, the episode would have been perceived worse than it has been. But I never have thought of this episode as bad, only as drastically insane. Which was something that we needed at the time due to the serious turns in Trek during this period, with the Dominion and the Founders and Maquis and other threats in Deep Space Nine, to the destruction of the Enterprise D and the Borg Attack in the Next Generation movies of the period. With all of the seriousness of the state of the Federation on the Alpha quadrant side, we really needed something totally crazy to happen in the Delta quadrant side. And this was simply the first time they did it in Voyager, they had some other totally whack episodes after this, but nothing as crazy as this episode. It set a new standard for insanity. Which is why I personally love it.
And the ending is just way beyond the pale, when you think it can't get any crazier, it does, and then it even gets more absurd and insane after that, up until the very last scene which is the most incredibly crazy thing that we've ever seen any Star Trek, ever.
Y'all simply don't have a sense of humor, enjoy this for what it is, high comedy and absurdity, Star Trek style. Get out the popcorn when this episode plays, pretend like you are watching mst 3000, and enjoy it. I always make a point to watch this at least once every six months, it really lifts me up when I am in the dumps. Whaddya think this is? The last episode of Game of Thrones or something? (Which I also liked).
Tom is a pilot first and foremost, on top of being a jerk most of the time. In this episode, it appears that he is spearheading a team that has been planning hard designing a shuttle that can do something extraordinary, and he is the man that will pilot this. This is the flight that will give him something that he has wanted since he was a child, a feeling of accomplishment by doing something nobody else has. He is very sincere in all of his efforts and his arguments with Captain Janeway award him the chance to do this thing. But he is almost prevented from doing it because The Doctor thinks he has developed some form of brain-measles. Fortunately, and because we know Tom Paris' character well by this point, he is able to talk himself back into the pilot's seat.
However, what begins as a quest to break an ultimate speed barrier, takes a sharp twist and "devolves" into insanityland.
And I have never laughed so hard for a Star Trek episode, ever!
People simply don't appreciate the humor of this episode, especially the non-standard and possibly unintentional (but probably, actually intentional) comic acting by Robert Duncan McNeil. He nails this, if he had not pulled out all of the stops, the episode would have been perceived worse than it has been. But I never have thought of this episode as bad, only as drastically insane. Which was something that we needed at the time due to the serious turns in Trek during this period, with the Dominion and the Founders and Maquis and other threats in Deep Space Nine, to the destruction of the Enterprise D and the Borg Attack in the Next Generation movies of the period. With all of the seriousness of the state of the Federation on the Alpha quadrant side, we really needed something totally crazy to happen in the Delta quadrant side. And this was simply the first time they did it in Voyager, they had some other totally whack episodes after this, but nothing as crazy as this episode. It set a new standard for insanity. Which is why I personally love it.
And the ending is just way beyond the pale, when you think it can't get any crazier, it does, and then it even gets more absurd and insane after that, up until the very last scene which is the most incredibly crazy thing that we've ever seen any Star Trek, ever.
Y'all simply don't have a sense of humor, enjoy this for what it is, high comedy and absurdity, Star Trek style. Get out the popcorn when this episode plays, pretend like you are watching mst 3000, and enjoy it. I always make a point to watch this at least once every six months, it really lifts me up when I am in the dumps. Whaddya think this is? The last episode of Game of Thrones or something? (Which I also liked).