Entertainment
Starfleet Academy Just Made A Perfect Voyager Episode Even Better
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
How do you fix a controversial show that audience members keep complaining about? Simple: through blatant fan service!
Starfleet Academy has been under constant fire from Trekkies who think the brand is being worn by it like a skinsuit. In an effort to combat this, the new spinoff has been making more and more callbacks to classic shows, attempting to strengthen its ties to some of the franchise’s best episodes from Star Trek’s golden age.
The latest Starfleet Academy episode, “Life of the Stars,” takes fan service to the next level by serving as a direct sequel to a forgotten Voyager episode. In “Real Life,” the Doctor used Voyager’s holodeck to create a family for himself, but thanks to the realism of his simulation, his digital daughter died after a freak accident. While he never seemed all that bothered about it in subsequent episodes, Starfleet Academy just revealed that he has been carrying around the horrific trauma of her death for over 800 years.
The Real World
“Real Life” was an episode of Voyager’s third season in which the Doctor wanted to learn more about what it meant to be a human. Accordingly, he programmed a family in the holodeck, giving himself a wife and two children.
After Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres (who visit for dinner) tell him everything is a little too perfect, the Doctor tweaks the program to make it more realistic. This results in more rambunctious teenage children: the son falls in with a bad crowd of local Klingons, while the daughter starts playing the dangerous fictional sport of Parisses Squares.
While it looks like the Doctor’s son is in the most danger (it isn’t very long before he wants to get involved in Klingon bloodletting rituals), things take a turn for the worse when his daughter receives a fatal injury while playing sports. The Doctor’s attempts at treating her fail, and he shuts the simulation down out of sheer pain; however, after Tom Paris reminds him that families must support each other through even the worst tragedies. The holographic healer resumes the program and stays by his daughter’s bedside until she dies.
An Unexpected Callback
Star Trek: Voyager was a very serialized show, so it never really followed up on how the Doctor felt after watching his daughter die. However, the Starfleet Academy episode “Life of the Stars” dropped the bombshell revelation that he has been carrying around the extreme trauma of that event for more than 800 years. This also provides a retroactive explanation for why the Doctor has been so weird about SAM, his fellow hologram: she has reminded him of his daughter since day one, and he shut down her attempts to reach out to him because spending time with her reopened old wounds that had never fully healed.
SAM is glitching out in this episode, and the Doctor helps her mysterious alien race diagnose the problem: namely, that she never had the benefit of growing up, so she lacked the emotional resilience to process the recent trauma (namely, the Doctor’s own rejection of her) that she has experienced. In order to help her do so, the Doctor makes the radical decision to raise SAM on her homeworld, giving her 17 years of life experience before she returns to Starfleet Academy. But thanks to some timey-wimey stuff with her home planet, what feels like 17 years to SAM and the Doctor only amounts to about two weeks back at the academy.
Fan Service Done Right
Some critics of Starfleet Academy have complained that previous fan service episodes (mostly “Series Acclimation Mil,” which focused extensively on Deep Space Nine) are just naked attempts to please the audience. That doesn’t make them bad, necessarily; for example, some DS9 fans were happy to finally learn more about what happened to the Sisko. But “Life of the Stars” arguably takes fan service to the next level by making a perfect (albeit obscure) Voyager episode even better nearly 30 years later.
“Real Life’ is an underappreciated gem of an episode that allowed Robert Picardo to do some of his best work as an actor. He channeled some major pathos back then to portray the grief of a man experiencing grief over losing a daughter he never realized he loved until she was gone. Starfleet Academy brings that pathos back, letting Picardo give a master class in acting while adding some much-needed depth and complexity to his character.
Even if you’re not a huge fan of the show (maybe you even outright hate it), Starfleet Academy just added serious rewatch value to one of Voyager’s best episodes. The show also did this while giving explicit callbacks to the golden age of the franchise. Now that the show is finally getting decent (even downright good on occasion), let’s hope that this new Star Trek spinoff can defeat the ultimate no-win scenario of them all: premature cancellation by Paramount.
Entertainment
Get Ankers 14-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Dock for $60 less at Amazon
SAVE 15%: As of April 22, you can get the Anker Prime 14-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Dock for $339.99, down from $399.99, at Amazon. That’s a 15% discount or $60 savings.
$339.99
at Amazon
$399.99
Save $60
Working off a laptop is great until you realize you only have two ports and need to plug something in. If you’re hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you’re pretty much out of luck on the rest. Not only that, but your previously uncluttered desk will most likely look like a Best Buy exploded (a rat’s nest of cords isn’t cute or helpful for anyone getting work done).
If you literally hate mess and cords as much as I do, you need a docking station to hide all that chaos and protect your aesthetic. Right now, Anker’s Prime TB5 Docking Station is on sale for $339.99 at Amazon, down from $399.99. (That’s a $60 price cut.)
Mashable Deals
Are you going to use all 14 ports at the exact same time? Probably not, but you’ll never have to dig through your bag for a specific adapter again. You just plug a single cable into your laptop, and the dock handles the rest. It features a Thunderbolt 5 upstream port, two Thunderbolt 5 downstream ports, two USB-C ports, three USB-A ports, SD and TF card readers, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, an audio jack, and your choice of HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 2.1. It’s also fast enough to transfer a 150GB file in 25 seconds.
Entertainment
How I scored ad-free Paramount+ Premium for only 99 cents
SAVE $26: As of April 22, returning subscribers can score two months of ad-free Paramount+ Premium for only 99 cents per month with the code N8C27L. Usually $13.99 per month, that’s $26 in savings. Just note that your mileage may vary.
$0.99/month for 2 months (save $13/month) with code N8C27L
If you’re looking to save some money on your streaming lineup, my number one recommendation is to cancel your subscriptions. While it doesn’t work for every streamer, many will offer you a special discount to come back. Not to mention, you’ll be eligible for any new deals that may appear that are marketed to “new and returning customers.” Case in point: as of April 22, returning subscribers can get two months of ad-free Paramount+ Premium for just 99 cents per month.
I’ve tested this out myself, so I can vouch for it. When you navigate to Paramount+ and sign in to your existing account, you’ll be prompted to pick a plan. Select the Paramount+ Premium monthly plan for $13.99 per month. On the “Welcome back!” page, scroll down to the box that says “Have a promo code?” and enter N8C27L. Once you hit “apply” the price should drop to just 99 cents per month.
Credit: Paramount+
That’s all, folks. You can take advantage of two full months of ad-free Paramount+, Showtime, BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, CBS live TV, UFC fights, and more for less than two bucks. That’s $26 total in savings.
Mashable Deals
Paramount+ has a surprisingly hefty library. Subscribers can enjoy Paramount+ Originals like Landman and RuPaul Drag Race All Stars, Showtime series like Dexter Resurrection and Yellowjackets, CBS hits like Survivor and NCIS, and nostalgic shows from Nickelodeon and MTV. Not to mention, there’s a lineup of movies that’ll keep you fully entertained for your two-month promotional period. Just be sure to cancel again before the second month is over if you want to avoid paying full cost. You can always sign up again when another deal arises. I know I will.
Entertainment
How Stargate SG-1 Used A Classic Trope To Emotionally Wreck Its Fans
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Garfield and Friends said it best: “Oh no, we’ve resorted to an evil twin storyline.” Star Trek: The Original Series did it the best with Mirror Universe Spock, and ever since, it’s been a lazy excuse for every series to use when they run out of ideas. The exception is Stargate SG-1’s sixth episode, “Cold Lazarus,” which plays with the trope by making the twin less evil and more confused.
When fans say they skip this episode when rewatching, it’s not because it’s a lazy, poorly written episode. In fact, it’s the opposite. The ending of “Cold Lazarus” is a pivotal character moment for Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and a gut punch to the audience.
Stargate SG-1’s First Evil Twin
“Cold Lazarus” opens with the SG-1 team on a planet that doesn’t look like Vancouver (it was a giant pile of sulfur at the port of Vancouver). The desert landscape is dotted with shattered blue crystals that look like the remnants of a civilization until we see a crystal eye-view of O’Neill, a mysterious light knocks him out, and all of a sudden, a second O’Neill is looking down at the first. Turns out, the crystals are the civilization.
Fake O’Neill is trying to figure out who O’Neill is and what SGC is all about. When he pulls out photos of his family, it takes Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) by surprise. O’Neill’s never mentioned his wife, Sara, or his son, Charlie. Confused, the Fake O’Neill goes to the home, where Sara is disgusted he’d come by and thinks it’s a sick joke that he’s asking about Charlie. If you’re wondering if you missed a key part of O’Neill’s backstory, don’t worry, this is the first time that either Sara or Charlie is mentioned, and tragically, we soon learn why.
No One Ever Dies
Charlie shot himself with O’Neill’s gun. Fake O’Neill starts to piece this together when he goes into Charlie’s old room and breaks down, prompting Sara and him to finally have the conversation about their shared grief. Back in SGC, the crystal’s nature is revealed to be an energy alien calling itself Unity, which accidentally killed a Jaffa, and the Goa’uld shattered them in retribution. That’s when O’Neill stumbles back through the Stargate, and the team realizes the mistake they made.
The Fake O’Neill is soon captured at a local hospital, suffering from Earth’s radiation, where he explains that he sensed O’Neill’s pain after he took his form and wanted to help ease the suffering, as nothing ever truly dies to Unity. To prove its point, Unity transforms into Charlie, giving O’Neill and Sara one last chance to see their child. Fans who haven’t lost a child can understand the emotion, but for fans who have, this scene is emotional torture, in the best way possible.
Jack knows this isn’t Charlie, but he talks to him like he is, and then they walk together through the Stargate back to Unity’s planet. It’s a beautiful moment that explains so much about O’Neill’s throwing himself into work and how even his friendships remain professional. “Cold Lazarus” may have started out with the “evil twin” trope in full effect, but the ending is proof that even early during its run, Stargate SG-1 was going to be the greatest.
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