“Live Fast and Prosper”
Written by Robin Burger
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 6, Episode 21
Production episode 242
Original air date: April 19, 2000
Stardate: 53849.2
Captain’s log. Two miners on Telsius Prime meet with Captain Kathryn Janeway and Commander Tuvok from the Federation Starship Voyager—except we see that it most definitely is not Janeway and Tuvok. The combadges and rank pips are comically large, they have forehead ridges, and the faces and voices are completely wrong.
They are, in fact, grifters named Dala and Mobar, posing as Voyager’s crew, claiming their small ship is the Delta Flyer. They know a surprising amount of detail about Janeway and Tuvok. They promise to exchange some bolomite for an equal amount of dilithium—an unfair trade for Voyager, but Dala says that they need the bolomite for some orphans.
Once they beam back to their ship with the bolomite, they claim a neutron storm is hitting them, interfering with transport, and they’ll come back later with the dilithium. They then bugger off, intending never to get near Telsius Prime again.
On the real Voyager, Janeway is grumpy about her sonic shower not working—it’s so loud when it activates that it shatters her bathroom mirror. She goes to engineering where Torres reports that there’s a ton of malfunctions that she can’t track. The next malfunction is the food replication system, which has added a contaminant. They discover that all the malfunctions are coming from a substandard heating coil that Neelix installed. He got it from Sister Dala when they did a trade in the Wyanti System. The sister was trying to help some orphans.
Chakotay interrupts, saying Janeway’s needed on the bridge right away. The two miners’ boss, Orek, has tracked down Voyager and demands the dilithium they promised. Janeway has no clue what he’s talking about.
Orek beams aboard and shows the garbled transmission from the fake Delta Flyer. Janeway insists it wasn’t her. Orek mentions that “Janeway” talked about using the bolomite to help orphans, and a switch flicks in Janeway’s head.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
She goes to Neelix, who tells the full story of how Neelix and Paris went to the Wyanti System to find a spore for the EMH, and stumbled across Sister Dala and Brother Mobar—the same two grifters, dressed as monks. They got themselves invited to the Delta Flyer, talked extensively to Neelix about the ship and captain and crew, and performed a “cleansing ritual” before departing to help their orphans, cough cough.
Janeway checks the Flyer and sees that the ship’s entire database was downloaded around the time of the cleansing ritual. They’ve been had.
Orek is skeptical that Neelix and Paris could be that stupid (he obviously hasn’t met them), but Janeway convinces him to share his sensor data on the “Delta Flyer.”
Meanwhile, Dala, Mobar, and their other partner, Zar (who is posing as Chakotay, complete with fake tattoo) are trying to convince Varn to join the Federation. They say it’s normally a long process, but Janeway knows some people on the Federation Council who can expedite their application. But Varn would have to invest significant resources…
Neelix and Paris lament how easily they fell for the grift. They think they’ve gone soft, and to prove that they still have some rogue left in them, they try to pull a shell game on the EMH. This is a spectacularly bad idea, as the EMH has greater visual acuity than an organic lifeform, and he sees that Neelix hid the nut in his hand instead of under one of the cups.
Tuvok tracks down the warp signature of the grifters’ ship. They find them confronting Varn, who is complaining that (a) the “photon torpedoes” they provided don’t work and (b) they also let their deadliest enemy into the Federation! When Voyager arrives, Dala tries to scare Varn off by saying her mothership has arrived, but Varn keeps attacking, doing damage to Voyager.
Seven manages to beam Dala off the ship before the grifters’ ship breaks out of the tractor beam and escapes. Voyager runs away also.
Janeway confronts Dala, who is unrepentant, and not interested in providing any information to Janeway. Janeway threatens to turn them over to the Telsians, and she and Tuvok weave a pretty tale about how awful Telsian prisons are. But Dala doesn’t give in.
Later, Neelix brings her food and tries to convince her of the error of her ways. She pretends to go along with it, but then ambushes Neelix, and uses his phaser to zap the guard. She then steals the Delta Flyer—
—which has a couple of “stowaways” in Paris and the EMH’s mobile emitter. Dala rendezvouses with Zar and Mobar at their stash planet. Paris activates the emitter and then the EMH changes his appearance to look like Dala while Paris keeps Dala prisoner on the ship. The EMH fools Zar and Mobar long enough to reveal their stash, though it’s buried too deeply for transport to work, so Tuvok beams down to take Zar and Mobar (who is gobsmacked to meet the real Tuvok) into custody.
Voyager returns the stolen items to their rightful owners. (It’s not clear what they’ve done with the trio of grifters.) Neelix and Paris take another shot at the shell game, and manage to fool the EMH with a sleight of hand.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway obviously is getting a mild kick out of confronting her doppelgänger, and gets an even bigger one out of grifting her right back.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok is surprised by Janeway’s sudden desire for him to make up a nasty prison system on Telsius Prime. He does mostly okay, though his mention of the prisoners dying of psoriasis gets a snotty comment from Janeway later.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH saves the day with his mobile emitter’s ability to alter his appearance to look like Dala. Also, it’s really hard to fool him with the shell game.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix blithely gives all kinds of personal information about Janeway to a perfect stranger. You wonder how, exactly, he survived before running into Voyager.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Paris and Kim have been altering Tuvok’s Oracle of K’Tal program so that the oracle appears in pajamas. They deny this to Tuvok’s face, though later contemplate giving the oracle a sombrero.
Do it.
“I have transmission logs, transport records, scans of your shuttlecraft…”
“I have never been to your planet, Mr. Orek, aboard Voyager or any other vessel.”
“Our ship’s logs will confirm what the captain’s been telling you.”
“And how do I know they’re authentic records?”
“How do we know your records are authentic?”
“You think I falsified data? Why would I do that?”
“Perhaps to extort dilithium from us.”
–Orek refusing to believe Janeway and Chakotay and Tuvok being a good security chief.
Welcome aboard. Kaitlin Hopkins, last seen as a Vorta in DS9’s “The Ship,” plays Dala; Francis Guinan, last seen as Minister Kray in “Ex Post Facto,” plays Zar; Gregg Daniel plays Mobar. Ted Rooney plays Varn, Timothy McNeil and Scott Lincoln play the two miners, and Dennis Cockrum, last seen as a freighter captain in TNG’s “Face of the Enemy,” plays Orek. Both Guinan and Cockrum will appear in Enterprise’s “The Communicator.”
Trivial matters: Kim had already planned practical jokes on Tuvok’s Temple of T’Panit holodeck program in “Ashes to Ashes.” It’s unclear if the Oracle of K’Tal is part of that program or a different one.
In a deleted scene, Dala also posed as Seven of Nine.
This is the final Trek writing credit for Robin Burger, who left the production staff after this season.
Set a course for home. “Gentlemen, I believe you’ve been had.” This episode just charmed the shit out of me, from the beginning with the hilariously inaccurate uniforms all the way to the end when Tuvok saved the day by shining a flashlight in Mobar’s face to distract him.
But what really got me to love this episode was Dala’s escape from the brig, because it so beautifully plays on our expectations. People in Star Trek stories escape far too easily from places they shouldn’t be able to escape from, and they steal support craft way way way more easily than they should be able to. Seeing it happen here, the viewer is conditioned to think, “Oy, they’re doing it again.”
Except they aren’t! The whole thing was a setup, beautifully executed by Janeway.
Janeway’s actions here are wonderful, because she plays Dala at her own game, starting with her and Tuvok trying to scam her into thinking that the Telsians are nastier than they are, then by letting her escape and lead them to her stash.
I especially love Mobar, who so completely throws himself into the part of Tuvok, sometimes to the detriment of the grift. Even when he’s just with Dala and Zar, he’s still inhabiting the role of Tuvok. And then the wide-eyed fangoobering he does when he meets the real McCoy is hilarious.
I also absolutely adore that it’s Neelix and Paris—the two guys on the ship who should be least likely to fall for a grift, given that their histories—are the ones who fell for Dala and Mobar’s con, hook, line, and fake chants. But then, they have gone soft, as they say: they’ve been living a life of luxury on a ship that, despite being tens of thousands of light-years from home, isn’t really suffering any significant hardship. Hell, from the speech Neelix gives to Dala (for all that it was part of Janeway’s con) shows that he’s happier being a good person on Voyager than he was being a scrounger on his own. I would think that softness would be a small price to pay. At least when not being conned…
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to check out his Patreon—which includes TV and movie reviews (he recently covered In the Heights, Sports Night, Moonstruck, Suspects, London Kills, and more), excerpts from his works in progress, vignettes featuring his original characters, and cat pictures—and his YouTube channel, “KRAD COVID readings“—which for 2021 has Keith reading his Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers stories.
Hm, I’m surprised you liked it this much. I recall considering it a silly, mediocre bit of fluff.
Honestly, it’s a premise that would’ve made more sense on TNG or DS9. Con artists exploiting the Federation’s reputation would make more sense in a part of the galaxy where the Federation has a reputation. Part of what makes a good con is exploiting your mark’s pre-existing expectations — letting them do most of the work for you. If you have to convince them of the premise that’s necessary to sell the con, it’s a much harder sell. (It annoyed me how often Mission: Impossible, especially the ’88 revival, did plots about trying to pull a supernatural con on someone who was a skeptic. It would make far more sense to pull one on a believer.)
@1
It doesn’t make dramatic sense, though. Trying to con a skeptic makes for a harder con = greater suspense = greater drama.
This is such a fun little episode and I totally agree that they executed Dala’s escape really well. The second she grabbed Neelix’s phaser, I was rolling my eyes. What a piss-poor security guard! Of course they don’t have any security on the Delta Flyer! I was grumbling so much that my husband had to point out that they were tricking her.
I wish we had seen what happened to Mobar though. I like to think he joined an acting troupe after this, since he was clearly more into method acting than grifting.
@2/Frito: I don’t agree. There are a lot of successful con-game stories about exploiting a character’s existing beliefs or biases. The only reason Mission: Impossible did so many episodes about supernatural cons pulled on skeptics is that the show was trying to vary its usual formula of pulling supernatural cons on believers. And the usual formula made more sense than the attempts to play against it. It’s not “greater drama” if the basis for the drama is obviously contrived and you don’t buy the premise as believable to begin with. That just exposes the author’s hand manipulating events, and that artificiality removes the suspense rather than heightening it.
After all, it’s not believable for the characters to make things harder for themselves by deliberately choosing a more uphill path. That’s just gratuitous. They should choose what they think is the best or easiest path, and be surprised when it turns out to be harder than they thought. They should be countered by outside forces, not by their own ineptitude in their choice of strategy.
Besides, in the case of “Live Fast and Prosper,” the con artists are the ones we’re rooting against. They’re the bad guys, even if they’re comic villains. And you always want to make things easier for the bad guys and harder for the good guys.
@@.-@
“That’s gratuitous.”
That’s television. That’s also the movies. The Sting wouldn’t have been as nearly as satisfying if Robert Shaw had been a true and eager believer in the con. He’s constantly scrutinizing every move Redford and Newman make, and that leads to some suspenseful scenarios.
But that’s a movie where the con artists are the heroes, so it’s a different situation from this episode. (As is Mission: Impossible by the way).
This episode has more in common with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels than anything else we’ve mentioned.
Hang on, what am I talking about here? One of my favorite movies, The Man Who Would Be King, is about two con artists taking advantage of true believers. Never mind then.
I also recall this one being mediocre on initial viewing and haven’t really been inclined to view it since but I’ll probably do so again soon to see if I was perhaps being too hard on it. But my feeling was that the idea of con artists impersonating the Voyager crew leant itself to a lot of comedy, and that clearly the intention of this story was for a lighter episode, but I didn’t find it particularly funny overall. I thought the story would be better if the con artist group was bigger so that more of the Voyager main cast would be impersonated and thus more comic potential. But only Janeway, Tuvok, and Chakotay were impersonated. Apparently Seven was also impersonated but that was a deleted scene.
@5/Frito: “The Sting wouldn’t have been as nearly as satisfying if Robert Shaw had been a true and eager believer in the con. He’s constantly scrutinizing every move Redford and Newman make, and that leads to some suspenseful scenarios.”
That’s because he’s a mob boss and a master criminal himself. There is no way to con him that isn’t difficult. That’s not what we’re talking about here. The point is that a con based on the Federation’s good reputation is bound to be less effective in a part of the galaxy where nobody’s ever heard of the Federation.
Remember, I’m not talking about the in-universe difficulty for the characters, I’m talking about the real-world question of which series this premise would’ve fit better. It would have been less awkward if it had been a TNG or DS9 episode, because it would’ve been easier to justify why the con artists thought that invoking the Federation’s name would be an advantage. It’s not about what the con artists can sell to their marks — it’s about what the writers of the episode can sell to the audience about the credibility of the premise. I’m saying I would’ve found it more credible in a different show.
“(As is Mission: Impossible by the way).”
I’m extremely familiar with M:I, thank you — I’ve reviewed every single episode and movie on my blog. And as I already told you, they did more episodes about pulling supernatural cons on believers than on skeptics. You can’t make blanket generalizations — every series has episodes that work better and ones that work worse (as should be clear enough from Keith’s Trek rewatches). I’m saying that the episodes where they tried to convince a skeptic worked worse than the others, that they were not among the show’s most convincing episodes.
I recall reading the Voyager Companion book and seeing the photo still of Dala and Mobar wearing those ridiculous uniform replicas long before I got to watch the episode. My first reaction to that photo was a genuine WTF. By this point, Voyager – like DS9 and TNG before, the 24th century shows as a whole – had developed enough of a specific ’90s aesthetic to set itself well apart from the original show. Meaning it took place in a reasonably serious universe. Were there comedy episodes? Sure, given all that Ferengi mythology over the previous 13 seasons, plus some other stuff. But Live Fast and Prosper plays almost like a TOS episode that was lost for decades, bringing back an almost campy – if not corny – quality to it. I could easily picture Harry Mudd of all people doing this kind of schtick.
If anything, I’m shocked Rick Berman allowed this episode to be made at all. Six years before, he fought tooth and nail to prevent TNG from doing space pirates before relenting with Gambit.
“Silly” is putting it mildly. It’s a credit to the cast, the guest cast, and LeVar Burton’s hand behind the camera that the whole thing holds together this well. Hopkins is particularly good – and proven versatile, given her excellent turn as the Vorta on DS9’s 100th. I’d never rate this as high as a 9, but it’s still a well made creative standalone episode that keeps this late season stretch lively enough.
Definitely agreed about Paris and Neelix being the ones to fall for the con; it would have been very easy to have Harry Kim penciled into that role, which would be much less interesting.
Is there a place to view Voyager deleted scenes? I’d love to see this.
@9
I’m sorry, I totally missed your M:I blog reviews. Serves me for not watching the news. ;-)
brandonw: That there was a deleted scene with Dala as Seven is from Katilin Hopkins posting on her Facebook page. (Here’s TrekCore tweeting about it.) But the picture that Hopkins posted is the only evidence of that scene that I’m aware of.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I always liked this one for basically the same reason KRAD did- its a light, fun piece of fluff where our heroes manage to subvert some of the usual expectations of them. I love the idea of people impersonating Starfleet officers for a grift, and I LOVE how Tuvok’s impersonator just gets so into his character. It is actually kind of adorable, and the eye-rolling by his fellow conmen makes it seem like he is likely always a method actor and it is just something they have to deal with. I wish the reputation of Voyager in the Delta quadrant came up more, because it either leads to really good episodes (like “Living Witness“) or pretty decent ones (like this one), and it really should be a matter of life or death for them.
The Neelix/Paris thing was actually my least favorite part of the episode, mostly because neither one of them has had anything resembling an edge in years, and neither of them were particularly edgy to start with. It’s not like they left the Raza to come aboard Voyager.
I thought it was a decent episode. I appreciated that the idea of space con-artists impersonating the Voyager crew was at least a unique idea, even if the execution wasn’t great. So much of season six felt like the same old warmed-over ideas we’d gotten for years – hard-headed alien societies, non-corporeal life forms, “meaningful allegories,” Alpha Quadrant artifacts, holodeck nonsense, technobabble, the Borg, and so on. So seeing a story that came across as genuinely unique was refreshing.
I always find it amusing when someone uses the phrase “The real McCoy” to refer to a Star Trek character who is not, in fact, named McCoy.
@16/David Martin: The working title of TOS: “The Man Trap” (and the title of the James Blish adaptation) was “The Unreal McCoy.”
“Inmates often die of malnutrition before they are brought to trial. Torture is commonplace, as is disease, including several incurable forms of psoriasis.”
This is basically a fun romp, and fun it is as well. The idea of a trio of con artists posing as Voyager’s crew is a good one which leaves Janeway struggling to play catch-up for most of the runtime before managing to outscam them. I can see the point of doing this on Voyager. If they were back in the Alpha Quadrant, then everyone would know what Starfleet officers are supposed to look like and act like and wouldn’t fall for things like having to pay to join the Federation. Here, the con artists are mixing a little bit of truth in with the lie, with the real Voyager as convenient scapegoats.
I was surprised how much I’d forgotten about this: Having just said I don’t remember Paris having a large role coming up, I suddenly found this one had him and Neelix in the key role of the resident wide boys falling for an obvious trick and struggling to make up for it. Tuvok gets many of the best lines, from his dry response to Orek questioning how Paris and Neelix could be so naive (“A legitimate question”) to his improvised monologue on the supposed barbarity of Telsian prisons. And I love the way Molar insists on staying in character the whole time, even when he and his cohorts are alone. I’m not sure at what point on first viewing I realised that “Dala” was really the Doctor but I think it was fairly early on: The reference to “lifesigns” (plural) aboard the Delta Flyer is a dead giveaway, yet it’s written and directed as though him reverting to his real form after Molar and Zar are captured is meant to be an “Ahh…” moment.
Neelix states Janeway has been captain of Voyager for almost six years, confirming she was new to the job when we first met her. Like the rest of us, he doesn’t seem to know anything concrete about her prior career other than that she was science officer on the Al-Batani. Curiously, Paris doesn’t give his rank when hailing the con artists’ ship. Janeway shows amazingly bad tactics in using her first shot to free the con artists’ ship from Varn’s tractor beam: It’s almost like she knows the episode can’t end yet so they’ve got to get away. At least the poor security when Dala escape Voyager can be put down to them wanting her to escape.
@18/cap-mjb: “I can see the point of doing this on Voyager. If they were back in the Alpha Quadrant, then everyone would know what Starfleet officers are supposed to look like and act like and wouldn’t fall for things like having to pay to join the Federation.”
You’re not thinking in terms of the frontier. Geographically speaking, the Federation is a tiny, tiny portion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, but it’s a major enough interstellar power that its reputation and influence would be felt far and wide. Its effects on its neighbors would be observed by their neighbors in turn. Traders traveling between civilizations would pass on stories. Look at history. The Roman Empire and Han Dynasty China knew about each other through stories and trade passed across the continent, even though they rarely if ever had any direct interaction.
Also, think about early TNG. At the start of season 1, the Federation had been aware of the Ferengi’s existence for a while but had never directly met them, knowing them only through space legends or the accounts of those who’d had dealings with them — apparently including exaggerated tales of them consuming their trade partners. By the same token, there could be worlds out on the frontier that have heard of the Federation by reputation but have never encountered it directly. Those are the people that this kind of con could work best on.
“Neelix states Janeway has been captain of Voyager for almost six years, confirming she was new to the job when we first met her.”
New to the ship, perhaps, but that doesn’t equal being new to the job. Picard was new to the Enterprise at the start of TNG, but he’d been a starship captain for over 30 years at that point.
Besides, Trek characters’ time references are sometimes sloppy and based on the writers forgetting the difference between fiction and reality — like Morrow in ST III saying the Enterprise was 20 years old just because the franchise was, even though the ship had to be at least 28 years old (13 years from “The Cage” to season 1, 15 years from there to TWOK). So you can’t take such things too literally.
How would Janeway know that Dala wouldn’t incinerate Neelix and the security guard with her phaser when escaping? That seems too risky to chance. And Dala just happens to know how to pilot the real Delta Flyer?
I agree with CLB that this story would have made more sense if it took place in the Alpha Quadrant where the Federation actually exists. You could show a species getting all excited to meet with representatives of the Federation because the aliens have actually heard of the Federation and know what it’s about. In the Delta Quadrant, the con artists would have to work harder at even selling the concept of what the Federation is, especially if there’s been no precedent for it before.
@18/cap-mjb: There’s no reason why true con artists couldn’t pull off the Federation impersonation in the Alpha Quadrant by perfectly acting and resembling like how real Starfleet officers are. That’s what the best con men and women do.
@14, I wish the reputation of Voyager in the Delta quadrant came up more, because it either leads to really good episodes (like “Living Witness“) or pretty decent ones (like this one), and it really should be a matter of life or death for them.
That was one of the few things I did enjoy about the Kazon arc. “Dreadnought” established that the Kazon were spreading misinformation on Voyager and its reputation throughout local space. It was to help isolate it from potential allies and make it easier for them to capture the ship and its technology.
It just feels like something else that was lost from the show once Piller was ousted by Berman and Taylor.
@21: Piller was ousted? I believe he left on his own to follow other pursuits like UPN’s Legend.
@22,
No, wait, yeah, you’re you’re right.
I wasn’t thinking.
@20 – “And Dala just happens to know how to pilot the real Delta Flyer?”
Everybody on Trek knows how to operate any equipment even if it’s built by a race they’ve never encountered before and they don’t speak the language. About the worst we’ve seen was the “Where’s the damn antimatter inducer?” scene from TVH.
I agree with everything Christopher Bennett said. Especially his very first sentence.
@20
How would Janeway know that Dala wouldn’t incinerate Neelix and the security guard with her phaser when escaping? That seems too risky to chance. And Dala just happens to know how to pilot the real Delta Flyer?
Since it was a setup, of course Neelix would have been carrying a modified phaser that couldn’t do more than stun (regardless of what the settings read).
With respect to the Delta Flyer, Dala may have had a chance to look through the database she stole.
Or not.
Federation crews seem to have an uncanny knack for quickly being able to operate non-Federation equipment; think of Paris sitting down at the controls of an alien craft and having it hum for him in minutes.
There’s no reason to think the reverse can’t apply … as the plot requires (no matter how illogical).
(They only seem to consistently spend a lot of time on this problem in DS9, where O’Brien’s adventures with, and eventual mastery of, Cardassian tech is a major facet of the series.)
@19: New to the job, not new to the rank. The job being captain of Voyager.
@20: They could, but that would be a different sort of episode since the impersonation would have to be more exact, and as I said, they might find it harder to exploit people who know how the Federation is supposed to work. And markvolund just said what I was going to about the likelihood of them giving Dala access to a lethal weapon.
@27/cap-mjb: Okay, good. There are some people who are oddly determined to believe that Janeway was a novice captain at the start of the series despite a total lack of any reason to believe that, and I mistakenly thought you were one of the people advocating for that. Sorry.
“as I said, they might find it harder to exploit people who know how the Federation is supposed to work.”
And as I said, that’s completely misconstruing what I intended to suggest. I wasn’t talking about the Federation’s immediate neighbors, but about more remote worlds in the Alpha and Beta frontiers where a starship like the Enterprise might probe — near enough to be aware of the Federation’s reputation for benevolence, but far enough that they’ve had little or no firsthand interaction.
@28: And as I said, that’s completely misconstruing what I intended to suggest. I wasn’t talking about the Federation’s immediate neighbors, but about more remote worlds in the Alpha and Beta frontiers where a starship like the Enterprise might probe — near enough to be aware of the Federation’s reputation for benevolence, but far enough that they’ve had little or no firsthand interaction.
The downside to that is that the con has a shelf life. Once the Federation’s expansion or exploration reaches where the con-artists are operating, they’re busted.
If the Delta Quadrant con-artists hadn’t made the mistake of giving Voyager a faulty heating coil and raising their suspicions, Voyager would have sped steadily away from them at high warp, and they’d have been free to keep the con going for as long as they wanted. Heck, for all the Voyager crew know, there could be another set of grifters every few thousand light years or so going back along their path, trading on whatever reputation Voyager left behind, and they’d be none the wiser.
That still doesn’t make their con make a whole lot of sense for the reasons you point out, but maybe if Voyager built up enough of a reputation in a local region (see “Living Witness,” etc.) it might be able to work, with the upside that there’s zero (or almost zero, thanks a lot crappy heating coil) chance that they’d ever be discovered by the actual Voyager.
@29/elcinco: “The downside to that is that the con has a shelf life. Once the Federation’s expansion or exploration reaches where the con-artists are operating, they’re busted.”
Obviously, for any given world, but we’re talking about a work of fiction here. The point is that, as a storyteller, you can choose to set that story in a part of the frontier that meets the parameters I’m describing. After all, space is huge — you never run out of new frontiers once the old ones are thoroughly explored.
“Dala rendezvouses with Zar and Mobar at their stash planet.”
That is one of the best sentences I’ve read all year. It cracked me up so much. Well done!
I watched this episode again and it did turn out to be more fun than I remember it being initially. Not as good of a grift plot as “Counterpoint” was, but the little moments you mentioned–the fake uniforms, the guest stars’ acting, Dala’s “escape,” were definite highlights.
I watched it again and thought it was cute but still overall, mediocre. It just wasn’t as funny as it had the potential of being. My biggest laugh actually came from Robert Picardo and his interaction with Neelix and Paris when they try to grift him the first time.
The actors playing Dala and fake Tuvok did an excellent job though.
@13/krad Thanks for linking that tweet. Neat picture. I’m amazed at the trivia like this you add to these rewatches, it’s really fun.
The best part was the fake Tuvok. He played the part even when it wasn’t necessary. Watching him was worth the price of admission.
Do we not get “Muse” today?
@35/bgsu98: I think today is being treated as a holiday in the US because Independence Day was on Sunday.
I watched “Muse” last night for nothing like a sucker.
Yes, the Rewatch took today off for the Independence Day holiday. “Muse” will go up on Thursday.
Consider it a gift to allow you to put off rewatching “Fury” a bit longer…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What’s the point of CAPTCHA if it doesn’t weed out these annoying spam posts? Is it a bot that somehow registers on Tor in order to comment on a random article?
Anyways, I’m kinda glad there was no rewatch yesterday. I just watched Muse yesterday and it was one of the most hokey, terrible episodes of any show I’ve ever watched. I must have erased it from my memory the first time…
@39 & @41: I for one am really looking forward to the reviews of both “The Muse” and “Fury” – the former because I’m pretty sure I just watched it yesterday for the very first time and found it surprisingly charming and “cute” if entirely inconsequential and unmemorable; and the latter which I’ve actually rewatched several times (!) recently because while so awful, I find it so watchable and fun to do so. I’m curious to read about Krad and other viewers’ assessments.
So I was confused about why the grifters insisted on a trade instead of just having Neelix and Paris give them the food they wanted to give them. I thought it must be to plant some kind of spyware on board Voyager, but then they did the scanning during their chanting session and gained their info that way. So why the trade? They had their marks sold, so they didn’t need to add any legitimacy. All it did was end up turning Voyager on to them when the heating coil went bad.
Poor Mobar. He really loved being Tuvok. I tried to remember where I recognized the actor who played him from, but then I looked at his IMDB and realized he’d been in practically everything.
It’s a not super smart, but entertaining episode. The stupidest part was really to let a prisoner steal a real phaser, even if we want them to escape. When i saw Neelix stepping in the brig with a phaser, i was just wondering how many policies and directives it breaks…i think there could have been safer ways to let her escape.
Thanks, KRad, for giving this a high rating (I’d originally thought a 7, but 9 is good too in terms of the episode achieving what it set out to do). I’m an easy mark for con artist stories, and this one moves along well while conning the audience — which a good con story should always do. It’s not House of Games, but it doesn’t need to be. (Man, Ricky Jay really should have been on a Star Trek episode, but I digress).
It was nice to see Hopkins return, though I didn’t recognize her (facial blindness). All the performances were excellent. Tuvok seemed to almost be having fun in his improv. The fake Tuvok was just so amusing.
A couple of nits to argue against:
Calm down about the phaser, folks. It was probably only designed to emit a limited force field beam or such — enough to make impact realistic — with no vaporize setting.
Why did the con artists need to trade a crap piece of technology for the food instead of accepting a donation? I think that’s part of the fun for a con artist. Also, with them going around impersonating the crew, the “gremlins” would hobble Voyager and make pursuit more difficult (even if it wasn’t, because our crew is just that awesome).
Why did Dala know how to fly the Flyer? Besides the conceit of universal flight controls, here it makes a little more sense. These folks have been around. It seems they were acquainted with a number of different ships. Probably not hard for them to figure out.