Well I grew up with a father who was in the military, who also collected a lot of WWII stuff and I learned about WWII at an early age.
I'm aware Star Trek is a Sci-Fi show, based around a fictional environment in the future.... but when a show.... any show of any genre, decides to take real life elements of our own past history to tell a story, one would expect that they'd at least get it right.... or even at the very least, close.
The Hirogen didn't exactly "Create" these holodeck programs, they found them in the data banks and modified them to suit their own objectives.... this in no way relates to asking Nelix to make Washington DC, because these files already existed in the computer, which would have been based around previously documented historical points in time.
I mean, in past episodes of other ST Series, the individual would state the location, environment, time period, etc. and the computer would do the rest, minus a few modifications here and there.... with such a vast computer system as they have in the future, you'd think it'd be pretty accurate.
The crew were basically programmed to be holo-characters, thus the way they talked, their movements, their actions wouldn't have matched their existing knowledge of the time or the weapons as holo-characters.
My point of the 70's cop sitcom remark was when Torres was shooting the handgun and every time she fired, the gun and her hand would jerk forward like it's somehow throwing the bullet, when in reality there'd be a recoil/kickback.....
Then you had the Nazi Uniforms where there was no armband w. the nazi logo, but they replaced it with the eagle and swastika patch which is normally found on the right chest-side of the uniform or the officer's hat.
I'm not bugged about the characters or the show in general, I'm bugged by the people who wrote and made up this two-part episode in that it appeared as though they simply didn't bother to do their homework for these episodes.
You guys can call it nit picking, but a part of my education/training in college and through my work was to focus on the small things like this in story development, character setup, environment, writing, etc., which eventually, if not done correctly, can add up to a shoddy story.
It's one thing to fudge sci-fi stories that probably won't ever exist in our real lives, and it's one thing to fudge what may occur in the future.... but when you're going to tell a story that's supposed to be something that actually happened in our past and actually is supposed to be based on truth.... fudging what really happened because you, the writer/director, are ignorant on what really happened, or simply don't care, is a crap way of making an episode and is shows pretty well through the episode.
Whenever I had to make up a storyboard, or the story overall, or work on character development for that story, I do research first, I ask those who have experience in certain fields to help me get a better understanding of what I'm trying to portray.... If it is based on something that exists or did exist in our lives, I confirm what I'm making up, matches to what actually happened. I'll never say that I get everything perfect, but doing this greatly reduces they chances of someone noticing the possible flaws, it makes the story more realistic.... more easier to relate to..... and when you're tossed a number of flaws that don't add up to the actual history of something in the story, it's hard to not get distracted by those flaws and be taken out of the environment the story is in.
I mean, there have been episodes in other ST shows that had their own flaws on this or that, but this episode in particular was imo, the worst offender of all the episodes I've seen yet in any ST series when it comes to aligning historical facts to the historical fiction they state is fact..... facts in which I mean, our real-life historical records which the ST universe is supposed to be roughly based on.
I mean, for most, I imagine they couldn't care less about the issues of this episode, but for me, if they took 5 minutes to look at official uniforms of that era, the weapons, the banners and flags used at the time..... and if they took the actors and gave them a 10 minute run down on how firearms are supposed to operate (kick-back, etc.) which every other show of the time, and even today, seem to be able to get a grasp on.... everything else would have worked out just fine for the episode and not much else would have been needed.
And Paris firing the M1 and complaining about how crude the weapons were, and as his last shot is spent, sending the ammo clip flying, you'd normally hear a loud metallic "PLING" noise as it flew out.... but it popped out without a peep.
For me personally, the episode reeks of lazy directing and lazy writing as well as lazy set/uniform design and that detracts from the overall concept of the episode. It could have been pretty good, but it ended up amateurish.
I did think that perhaps the reason why the banners and uniforms weren't authentic would be because of some people's hang ups of seeing official Nazi logos and uniforms that were actually used, so they toned down certain appearances of the swastika and such so that it wasn't as "Offensive" to some viewers..... but if that truly was the case, some people need to get a grip..... because this approach in the two-part episode was just tacky.
Then I thought that maybe they didn't have enough time or money to get all the proper research, props, training, etc..... so they just muddled through it.... which imo, if that was the case, then once again, they shouldn't have done the episodes in the first place if they were going to end up half-assed.
I guess I wasn't hampered by the same issues you were, as I rated the episodes 8/10 and 9/10 respectively. I really enjoyed it.
Then again, I really enjoyed
Fair Haven and
Spirit Folk. So when it comes to
Voyager, what do I know?
One thing I learned quickly around here is that my Trek opinions are quite often a bit unconventional. Just look at my ratings in my sig and marvel at how much you disagree with me.
To each their own... if you liked it, you liked it.... for whatever reasons you see fit.... for me personally, I found it loaded with holes. Most cases I can bypass noticeable holes in a story and enjoy it for what it is.... but this one for me had so many holes, it sank.
The general story concept of the Hirogen taking over the ship and using the crew in holograms to hunt... and using WWII as a setting all seemed to make decent sense for a story, it sounded pretty interesting.... it had potential.... but missing out on some of the subtle things that made the era what it was, made it seem like something..... I dunno.... just bad.
And it is not often that I call any particular ST episode of any of the series as "bad" as I can usually appreciate any episode for what they are and what they attempt to do...... but this one just seemed like filler, like a 2 minute crap song an artist slaps on the end of their album to fill in space.
