Talk:Vidiians/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 23:16, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Claiming this one now. I think my review will be piecemeal, but as long as you're in no hurry, it should be fine! Josh Milburn (talk) 23:16, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me. Thank you! Aoba47 (talk) 23:23, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• "The concept for the Phage as a bacteriophage was decided through a collaboration with science consultant André Bormanis." Who was collaborating with Bormanis?

• Specifiy it was the series producers. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "On the other hand, Jamahl Epsicokhan of Jammer's Reviews felt that their continued presence would strain the credibility of Voyager's journey home." This is a bit of a non-sequitur

• Revised. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• Do you think "the Phage" should be bolded in the lead? Arguably, this is as much about the Phage as the Vidiians.

• Put it in bold. It makes sense to me, but I am also open to suggestion either way. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "She attempts to reconcile with her identity as a half-human half-Klingon." Is B'Elanna's personal crisis relevant to the Vidiians? I think this can be dropped.

• Removed. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Following the previous two encounters, relations between Voyager and the Vidiians grow strained and antagonistic" Is this OR?

• I think it is made pretty clear in the episode, but I have removed it as it is unnecessary. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "In "Deadlock", Janeway orders Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) to direct Voyager into a nebula to prevent detection from two nearby Vidiian planets. The starship and its crew are duplicated when entering a space-time rift in the number." Number? Surely the relevant thing is just the duplication due to the space-time rift. (Incidentally: One of my favourite episodes!)

• It is a really strong episode. I have attempted to expand on this, but let me know if this needs more. Not sure how number slipped in there >< Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Several Vidiians attack Voyager and harvest vital organs from the crew. Janeway stops the invasion by self-destructing one of the two ships." One of the crews, one of the ships, and perhaps mention that the self-destruction kills the Vidiians and all of the crew on the one ship (excluding Kim and the newborn Naomi Wildman)? I think this episode is worth spelling out.

• Revised. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Even though the Vidiians are not prominent beyond the second season," OR?

• Removed. Aoba47 (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• I think it's worth mentioning again in the history and culture section that the Think Tank claim to have cured the Phage.

• Added. Aoba47 (talk) 19:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Braga stated that the Vidiians were partially inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, but emphasized that he wanted to portray them as sympathetic." The "but", here, is a bit weird; Frankenstein's monster is a relatively sympathetic character.

• Revised. Aoba47 (talk) 19:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Biller highlighted the scene revealing Sulan's transplant of Durst's face onto his own as "my classic moment in Voyager first season"." The grammar's a bit off, but this hasn't been introduced yet, so comes out of the blue a little.

• Agreed, I copied and pasted several parts from the "Faces" page without doing enough work to make it fit. I have attempted to revise, but I would greatly appreciate it if you look at it to revise a little bit more as I have hit a roadblock with it. Aoba47 (talk) 19:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• I would like to hear a bit more about Gonzalez's view of the Vidiians. As a preliminary note: he may mean something related to (what Wikipedia calls) realpolitik by "neopragmatism", rather than something in the American pragmatic tradition of philosophy. But I don't know for sure; I've not read the book. Maybe Gonzalez says more about this in this chapter. Do you have access to these?

• Unfortunately, his analysis in the book that I cited is rather brief. Here is the extract from the book about his analysis of the Vidiians: "As a seeming critique of neopragmatism, the species known as Vidiians is introduced in the episode "Phage" (1995)" and the rest of his mentions of the Vidiians are summary of "Phage". I also do not have access to the other recommended source unfortunately. Aoba47 (talk) 19:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• There's some mention which may be worth citing here.

• Added. Aoba47 (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• This looks citable.

• Added. Aoba47 (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• Some useful mentions here, specifically relating to the Vidiians as an example of the horror genre (possibly more that's useful), and here there's a mention of organ-stealing as a scifi trope, which is nice; you can link the Vidiians to other characters.

• Added both and reshaped the "Critical reception" subsection slightly. Aoba47 (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• A library search is throwing up other books about Star Trek, but I'm not able to tell if these contain anything more than passing mentions.

• I have encountered similar problems unfortunately. Aoba47 (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

The spectre of notability is, again, rearing its ugly head; I do think this crosses the line, but it's not a foregone conclusion! I'll be back to look at sources/images. Josh Milburn (talk) 14:03, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• @J Milburn: Thank you for your comments so far and I look forward to the rest of your review. I had similar concerns while constructing the page. It may be due to their somewhat limited appearances on the show (I was surprised by the low number of episodes that featured the Vidiians and I always thought it was a shame that the cure for the Phage was relegated to a throwaway line rather than an episode or even a scene) so that may explain the somewhat smaller coverage on them. I also believe that they have passed the threshold of notability, especially with the recent additions. Thank you again! Aoba47 (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

• "In his book Star Trek: Parallel Narratives, C. Gregory attributed the development of the Vidiians to Braga's affinity for the horror genre." Surely, this belongs in the development section?

• Makes sense to me. I have moved it. Aoba47 (talk) 01:33, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• Perhaps we could have a bit more about "Faces"?

• Added more. Aoba47 (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• I think you're making far too much out of a whole lot of nothing for the MMORPG paragraph. Perhaps this could be trimmed?

• Trimmed/revised. Aoba47 (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• "Robert Beltran said he felt uncomfortable acting in the Vidiian facial mask" This is jarring. The whole Chakotay-as-a-Vidiian thing has not been introduced.

• Added info to the "Appearances" section and also revised this. Aoba47 (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• "A complete Vidiian mask along with hand molds and other prosthetics were later sold individually during the It's A Wrap! auction; the sale also included a Vidiian phaser pistol.[37]" Is this important? Do you have a secondary source?

• Removed. Aoba47 (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• Is it correct that both Durst and Sulan were played by Markinson?

• That is correct. Aoba47 (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• This is random note, but I just wanted to let you know that I will most likely not be pursuing an FAC for this article if/when it does become a GA. While I would like to work towards making the Kazon article an FA sometime in the future, I am more than happy with the work that I put into making this in a GA and an article in the first place. Just thought you should know. Thank you for your help as always! Aoba47 (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• Just a quick comment: The description of "Faces" could still do with some work. It's a bit all over the place at the moment. The length is about right, but I think things could be made clearer. If I remember correctly, for example, Paris and Durst were forced to work while waiting to have their organs harvested, and Durst is killed by the Vidiians. This is all important. The fact that an away team has gone missing on Avery III, on the other hand, does not seem to be important to understand the role of the Vidiians in the episode/the wider context. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:57, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

• @J Milburn: I have revised this further. I have been having a lot of trouble with this article for some reason so I apologize for that. Aoba47 (talk) 14:29, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@J Milburn: Any updates on this? Aoba47 (talk) 19:50, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm utterly swamped. I'll try to get to this at some point this week; next weekend is looking relatively quiet (so far)... Josh Milburn (talk) 21:33, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• No worries; just wanted to check up on this. Aoba47 (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• Ok, I'm happy that this is ready for promotion. Great work, and apologies for taking a while! Josh Milburn (talk) 01:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

• No worries, and thank you for your help! I am just happy to get the article this far tbh. Hope you had a wonderful day! Aoba47 (talk) 01:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)