Entertainment Weekly reviewed the series finales of Voyager and Third Rock From the Sun. The Voyager excerpts can be found below.
FINALE FRONTIERS
On their last missions,
Voyager flies high, while 3rd Rock's familiar shtick doesn't quite get
off the ground. By Ken Tucker
Science-fiction-TV fans: Quiz alert!
"You launch a protoplasm capsule into your partner's receptor port and
then wait for an impact summary."
Is this a line
of dialogue from the series conclusion of (a) Star Trek: Voyager
or (b) 3rd Rock From the Sun?
Answer: (b)--
that's how John Lithogow's alien, Dick Solomon, describes to his girlfriend,
Mary (Jane Curtin), the act of sex as it's performed on his planet.
But the line wouldn't have been out of place on any Star Trek spinoff,
either-- it could easily pass for an explanation of a biological experiment
delivered by, say, Voyager's Vulcan security officer Tuvok (Tim
Russ).
For people with
a laser-beam-thin interest in sci-fi (oh, say... me, for instance), this
is one problem with the genre: the dialogue that's equal parts jargon,
joke, and gobbledygook. It takes a mighty actor to deliver sci-fi
drama-turgy, and 3rd Rock and Voyager both found one in their respective
leaders, Lithgow and Kate Mulgrew's Captain Janeway. Lithgow always
understood he was playing broad farce, and this stage vet pumped up his
energy and maintained a loopy wit that transcended the show's often limp
plotlines. For her part, Mulgrew presided over the USS Voyager
with a jaw as prominently steely as any to have graced a Starfleet Command
ship without slipping into inadvertent camp-- as the original Trek's
William Shatner did-- or the unwarranted huffiness, as Avery Brooks did
on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. (Patrick Stewart's Star
Trek: The Next Generation Captain Picard remains the standard of unprecedented
subtlety by which Trek's lead actors are measured.)
This week, both
series end long and prosperous runs-- Voyager premiered in '95,
3rd Rock in '96-- and both send their crews back home.
[...]
As for Voyager,
I catch about two viewings a season (the opener and ender), so I turned
to an expert to help me judge its finale-- my next door neighbour Mark,
that rare fellow with extensive Trek knowledge who also remains
an articulate adult. We viewed the two-hour send-off, which commences
in the future of Voyager's already future: a flash forward to most
of the crew, once over 70,000 light-years from home, now safe on Earth.
And when I say "most", I mean even my antennae went up when a returned
Janeway was asked about Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan, another sci-fi paradox:
a stiff hottie) and replied ominously, "I'd rather not talk about Seven
of Nine.") Uh-oh...
Neighbour Mark
pointed out that the final Voyager bears a strong resemblance to
the series' popular 100th episode from 1998; in both cases, it's necessary
for the crew to travel back in time to attempt to undo something awful,
thus breaching the hallowed "temporal prime directive"-- i.e., don't screw
with time periods, something UPN actually needs to do more often.
There's a special appearance by arch-arch-enemy, the Borg Quuen, once again
played by Alice Krige from the film Star Trek: First Contact-- not
the character's original actress, Once and Again's Susanna Thompson.
Robert Picardo,
as the holographic Doc, remains wittily prissy and priapic to the end,
there's a satisfying payoff to this season's pregnancy of B'Elanna Torres
(Roxann Dawson) and you've gotta like a space opera that has Janeway yelling
"Just get these Klingons off my tail!" When Mark and I turned off
the VCR and showed each other our notes, we'd arrived at the same letter
grade, a fair measure of Voyager's success to fan and casual viewer
alike. I hope our vibes are similarly attuned when I plant that new
tree on the border of our property. (Note: Grades are for finales;
as for series run grades, fight amongst yourselves.) Star Trek:
Voyager: B+