Perhaps the most tiresome element of the entire series so far is the whole Neelix/Kes/Paris love triangle. The pettiness and jealousy that Neelix expresses through it are the attributes which are dragging his character down the most. I mean, yeah, he's got something to worry about, because he is significantly less pleasant to be around than Paris is, but the the way he treats Kes with such suspicion and almost contempt makes it completely unbelievable that he hasn't driven her away already. Striking that part from his character would go a long way to making him more tolerable and the show more watchable. Unfortunately, even though they seem to resolve it every time it comes up, it keeps coming up.
Anyways, it's Kes' birthday, and everyone is burning more holojuice celebrating it in that bar that Paris brewed up. Neelix gets the crazy-eye going when Paris gets her a gift, but before I am tormented further, Tuvok (after almost letting Kim join the party in an amusing manner) alerts them to an incoming anomaly - and his signal becomes distorted. As it happens, that's not all that becomes distorted. But rather than give a play-by-play of everyone running through the halls of the ship for thirty minutes, I'm going to focus on what works and what doesn't about this puzzle anomaly.
Long story short, the Voyager is being twisted, crushed (in an interesting, fluid way), and distorted in this anomaly, but the effects don't match the concept. At some point, a visual representation of what the Voyager would look like to a third party observer is put on screen. It is best to ignore that, as it is entirely inconsistent with everything else they show in the episode. Instead of being contorted, as it is seen in that image, it is kind of being rearranged, block by block, like a 3D version of one of those 2D puzzles where you're shuffling squares around to try to make a picture. It's pretty cool, but the anomaly they've thought up isn't a realistic way to explain what's happening. Why would it shuffle whole rooms at a time, and line up doors conveniently? It turns out to be an intelligence of some sort, so maybe that's it, but that's a largely unfulfilling explanation for me. Everything is too neat, too tidy, and then you see walls of wavy lines all of a sudden and you wonder why they haven't been there all the time.
Of course, these kinds of complaints remind me of The Next Phase, a TNG episode wherein Geordi and Ro become phased from the rest of the matter in the ship. You can nitpick away at that episode - why can't they interact with walls or objects, but the floor is solid? How are they out of phase with the physical objects, but not the light or sound? Speaking of sound, how come they can hear everyone else but no one can hear them? Yet that episode is completely salvaged for me by three things: the process of Data planning and executing their funeral (with them present), Ro examining her beliefs about the afterlife as a result of thinking she has died, and Geordi's scene with Ro at the end: "We should develop our own interphase device. If it can teach Ro Laren humility, it can do anything." For most of Twisted, all I've got is Neelix fretting about being jealous to Chakotay and people in general bumbling around halls, lost. So I'm left to nitpick an otherwise interesting idea.
Right about at the point where I've given up hope, Tuvok gives a great sermon about the illogic of the "We've got to try something!" mentality. Basically, everything they've tried has worsened their predicament, and Tuvok says: (paraphrased) "Cut it out! Being crushed by this thing isn't 100% guaranteed to kill us, so perhaps the best thing to do is wait it out." Torres delivers a passionate argument against his philosophy, and I'm delighted. Even better, once everyone has given up, we get some great character moments between friends as they await their potential doom.
They tie up the jealousy thing at the end, again, and I want to believe it is over, but I'm wary. I don't really trust the writers to not bring us down that road again when they're out of ideas. Time will tell.
Watchability: 3/5
Bottom Line: A 2/5 episode is saved by a 4/5 ending.
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