Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: The Cloud

Normally I am all in favor of character development episodes. I think there needs to be more character development in most television series, especially action and/or sci-fi series. So by all rights I should love this episode, which has the flimsiest of plots stringing together a series of vignettes that develop the character of the main cast.

The problem is, this needs to be good character development. And oh boy, is it not.

So as Voyager plunges headlong into the "It's actually a life-form!" plot that should be enjoyable, but somehow isn't, let's try to rewrite these terrible characters into something better.

Especially Chakotay. For Gene's sake, writers, what were you thinking?

Doctor Whosday: Six Episodes, Five Keys, Four Quests, Three Companions, Two Hangers-On, One Sexual Assault, No Joy

Fresh off his success creating The Daleks, which catapulted Doctor Who into television history, writer Terry Nation wanted to do a historical story. When that fell through, the producers asked him to create another extremely marketable villain, like the Daleks had been. It was with this directive in mind that Nation wrote "The Keys of Marinus".

The serial was a series of quests for the titular keys, with each episode encompassing another adventure, with another key as the object. This plot would be replayed on a season-wide scale during the excellent "Key to Time" season, with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.

Unlike that story, The Keys of Marinus is crap. Welcome to Doctor Whosday!

Marvel Monday: Ouch! My Science!

Look, I get it. Science and comic books are like oil and water. Comics are a world where FTL is easily attainable, where radiation may as well be magic, and Nuclear Bombs Are Minor Inconveniences.

But sometimes the suspension of disbelief is snapped so completely that you have to wonder what kind of drugs the writers were on. This being July of 1962, I'm going to guess LSD. Welcome to Marvel Monday.

This is almost entirely unlike the actual cover. There was no disco in 1962.

Apocryphail Phriday: The Return

In 1994 the first Star Trek: The Next Generation movie was released: Star Trek Generations. And while some fans were willing to forgive the movie's glaring flaws in order to celebrate the pairing of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard, the flaws still existed. Perhaps the worst flaw is that Kirk dies by having a bridge dropped on him, while fighting a minor villain who just existed for the movie.

It was a terrible way to send out one of the galaxy's most beloved heroes. William Shatner apparently agreed, because he pitched an idea for the second movie, one which involved Kirk coming back from the dead and getting a far more appropriate send-off. It was doomed to failure, of course. The writing staff, quite rightly, decided that no matter how bad Generations was, the torch was passed to the Next Generation crew now, and they should have their own adventures.

All of the recycled plot. None of the emotional depth.

I mean, who would be foolish enough to keep on stealing plots from an old series while presumably attempting to establish a movie franchise of their own, right?

Since Paramount didn't want his plot William Shatner decided to write a novel of it. This spun off into the "Shatnerverse", an alternate timeline version of Star Trek. By all rights this should have been awesome. The return of one of science fiction's most enduring and beloved heroes, written with the sort of insider's perspective that only William Shatner could provide.

Let's see why it didn't work. This is William Shatner's "The Return".

1,000 Views!

Today The Jeffrey's Tube hit a milestone. A milestone of 1,000 views!

Now those of you who are internet savvy may be saying, "Views? But that means almost nothing. That could be 1,000 separate people, or one person who just keeps visiting the same pages."

Well yes. But I only just got analytics on this site working properly, so views is all I have. And I hit 1,000, and I'm very proud of that, and STOP KILLING ALL MY DREAMS!

Thanks to all my readers (especially my Russian readers who apparently got linked here from a Battletech forum. I hope you're enjoying all the Cold War comics and Doctor Who serials!)

Keep sharing the links, and keep the dream alive.

Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager: Phage

Some Voyager episodes are so bad that they are legendary. Some Voyager episodes would be good, if only they had fixed one or two fundamental problems. But some Voyager episodes should have been good, but for some reason they just weren't. Perhaps the acting was just a little sub-par. Perhaps there were some minor problems that built up. But for whatever reason, what should have been a decent show becomes mediocre at best.

Phage is one of those episodes. It is difficult to pin down just why Phage is mediocre. It should be great. And yet... somehow it is not. Oh, it's not bad, which in Voyager puts it in the top tier, but it's not the great show that it should be. Because the basic plot is solid, it will not require much to turn this into a classic Trek episode. Let's see what we can do.

Doctor Whosday: The Greatest Story Never Told

Being a Doctor Who fan has many frustrations. We have to deal with the neutering of the show by Mary Whitehouse and her ilk. We have to deal with certain stories being, how shall I put this... less than fantastic. In fact some of them are downright awful. We have to deal with continuity being an old rag to be beaten up, dirtied, abused, then torn to shreds, and the very word "canon" to be meaningless.

But perhaps most frustratingly, we have to deal with missing episodes.

There are a number of early Doctor Who episodes that were destroyed by the BBC during regular purges of old material. Of these, some of them have been recovered thanks to copies that were sold to foreign television stations, copies made by private enthusiasts, and other such discoveries. However, many First and Second Doctor stories remain missing, and as time goes on the chance of more being found diminishes.

The very first Doctor Who serial with currently missing parts is missing in its entirety. It was also perhaps the greatest First Doctor story ever produced. The serial is known by the name "Marco Polo".