S3 E26: Scorpion, Part I

Voyager has reached Borg space, for real this time, and it is vast. By sending out probes, they detect a corridor of space that is Borg free, but that's just because the Borg are being decimated by a new threat - which they have designated Species 8472. After Voyager's first encounter with the new enemy leaves Kim dying from a wound infection that is eating him alive, the Doctor discovers that their only hope for a cure is Borg nanoprobe technology - which he can't replicate fast enough. Janeway chooses to try to negotiate with the Borg for safe passage in exchange for the new 8472-beating nanoprobes. Her negotiations are cut short by 8472 showing up and destroying a whole Borg planet, leaving us with a cliffhanger as a cube, with Voyager in tow, flees at top speed.

This was my last first-run Voyager episode. I had already not watched half of season three, but tuned into the season finale out of a sense of duty more than anything else. What I saw disgusted me so much that I never watched again. When I was a kid, I'd watched TOS reruns with my dad (Shore Leave was my first episode ever) but when TNG first came on he was pretty suspicious of it - and, considering that the first two seasons were so bad, he had good reason. We started watching a little more regularly in the third season (probably the most underrated season in all of Trek), and by the time Best of Both Worlds showed up, we were absolutely riveted to the TV. I vividly remember my mom telling us that dinner was ready during that episode, and when we didn't come immediately said "I thought you didn't like this show that much."

"We do now."

So, long story short medium-length, Best of Both Worlds, and the Borg in general, have a lot to do with getting us into Trek in the first place. In my Unity review, I went into some detail about one thing I loved about the Borg - their lack of outright villainy or ill-intent. In this episode, they also lose their ability to analyze and adapt to threats AND can you can now negotiate with them, both of which drove me crazy. The line along which the Borg adaptation works required ingenuity and unpredictability from the characters facing them, but still allowed for the ability to defeat them (at least temporarily). The scene with the poor, hapless drone, repeatedly trying to assimilate the 8472 ship without success, and without adapting his strategy painted a pretty pathetic picture of what the Borg had become.

This time around, I wasn't bothered by those things as much. Voyager needs to go through Borg space to get home, and having a threat that can distract the Borg from Voyager's presence is a completely credible way to let them through without weakening the Borg. After all, the Borg have a history of ignoring non-threats, and they know enough at this point that even a lone Federation ship could easily be more trouble than it is worth. I would have been happier if 8472 had been more of an even match, or even just barely kept ahead of the Borg's adaptation, but that isn't a big deal.

What is a big deal to me is Janeway's behavior in this episode. She calls this senior staff meeting to discuss her plan of action, and when her trusted first officer stays afterwards to professionally present his misgivings about her plan, without showing any sign of dissent to the crew, she starts acting all melodramatically about standing alone. What? What?! It's entirely her prerogative to disagree with his suggestions and continue to follow her plan, a plan with which I happen to agree - the Borg in this case are definitely shown to the "the evil you know" - and as long as we're assuming that they can be negotiated with, then her plan is definitely sound. But to have her, the Federation captain of a Federation ship, behave like a spoiled child, one who throws a fit when people don't want to do what she wants to do... it is one thing to want her to be her own character, distinct from Picard and Sisko and Kirk, but this is just plain character assassination.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Reasonably exciting to watch, but it has none of the Borg philosophical magic that made Unity so great. This is the single highest rated episode on the Global Episode Opinion Survey for the entire Voyager series, and I can't see why.

S3 E25: Worst Case Scenario

Torres (then Paris, then everyone else in the crew) discovers an old holoprogram that simulates a Maquis takeover of the ship. Tuvok comes forth as the original author; he had initially intended it to be a training scenario for junior starfleet security officers, until he scrapped it after determining that a Maquis mutiny was no longer a likely event. Janeway thinks that a simulated overthrow of her leadership is a hilarious and morale-boosting idea, so she allows Paris (and Tuvok) to finish the program. Seska, before leaving the crew, had found the program and altered it, so when Paris and Tuvok go to start adding more scenes, her avatar shuts off the safties and begins chasing them through the ship. Janeway and Torres find a way to help by writing in new elements as the program progresses, eventually allowing Tuvok to off the Seska-hologram and restore control.

Honestly, Janeway's reaction is weird to me. I guess it is sort of a break from her usual condescension, but having her be so open to the popularity of this program is really out of character. But, we get a reasonably fun episode out of it, and it is nice to see her less uptight, so I can let it pass. Tuvok and Paris work off each other well, in a way that I had hoped Tuvok and Neelix could have done. Neelix's scenes with Tuvok have degenerated into Neelix trying to teach him how great emotions are in a very preachy way, and Paris doesn't get a lot of good character-foil opportunities (why we haven't gotten more Paris-Kim scenes is beyond me, those two are great together), so again I'm pleased. I'm still not that impressed with the pairing of Paris and Torres; she and Kim have a lot more chemistry. Plus, Trek writers simply don't know how to write for flirtatious characters - they end up using variations of the bad pick-up lines you'd find on a list-of-jokes website, rather than sounding remotely genuine.

I could really do without all the meta-writing jokes though. I get it, this show about writing a story was written by writers. There are a ton of movies and shows and books out there whose hero is a writer (often flawless except for his extreme devotion to his craft), and so many times those stories serve as ego vessels for their creators that they need to be extremely entertaining or thoughtful to not bother me - though one of my favorite books of all time is an author-protagonist story, so it can be done. Janeway's line about Deus Ex Machinas being underrated is particularly grating to me: sure, when used sparingly, they're not all bad. But when they're used to the extent that the Voyager writers do, and then they call attention to it in this episode, that's a level of smugness that'll infuriate me.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: As a fun episode, it does its job.

S3 E24: Displaced

The crew of Voyager is, one by one, being replaced by innocent-looking aliens (the Nyrians). By the time that the crew realizes that this swapping is part of a hostile take-over of the ship, it is far too late. Eventually, the whole crew is detained in a habitat that was designed to suit their needs, as long as they don't feel the need to escape. Well, they do, and discover that they're in a facility with a whole lot of these habitats. Janeway and Tuvok manage to take control of the device that captured the crew, and use it to hold the Nyrians hostage in one of those environments that they aren't well-suited for, until all the peoples that have been kept prisoner there are set free.

The Nyrians, like the invaders from Rise, have a reasonably interesting way of going about the rather commonplace activity of conquest in space. That they do things the way they do out of a desire to non-violently steal is a good hook. The director opined that he wished they were more sinister, but I think they're more unique by being so non-threatening. Well, their hats are pretty goofy, so there's that, but overall I'm happy with their implementation.

What sells me on this episode is the importance of the environmental preferences of the different species. Most of the alien-a-week groups don't get that kind of treatment - even many of the long-standing Trek species don't either. To then have that information be used as an important part of the plot of the episode is nice, but strays into obvious Chekhov's Gun* territory.

I've noticed that the more recent episodes have tended towards more technologically advanced enemies. I think part of the reason for that is not everyone liked the Kazon as much as I did, and the writers decided it must be because they were less technologically advanced. Although, it is pretty common for people to look at something, not like it, then try to look for a simple reason for why that thing is bad. See, for example, people who don't like Star Trek: very often, when I read rants about why someone doesn't like Star Trek (which I kind of seek out because I'm crazy), it transforms into a rant about how Star Trek is bad because the prime directive is bad. Or because having a multi-author show is bad. Or that the alien-a-week format is bad. Presumably, the writers got plenty of anti-Kazon feedback that said: low-tech is bad, and they took it to heart. Then again, they could have just decided that triumphing against a more powerful enemy would seem more heroic. I don't think that's necessarily true, but I'm happy to have variety.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Not a whole lot of depth, but this is a well-constructed episode, and I've got to reward that. Maybe my rating system is overly generous if "not making me wince" starts you out at a 4/5...

*I really need to stop linking to tvtropes. I lose at least an hour every time I do.

S3 E23: Distant Origin

Gegen, a Voth scientist, has discovered that his reptilian species shares a large number of genetic markers with the remains he has found of a Voyager crew member. He and a colleague catch up to Voyager and cloak themselves, content to study the crew before making their presence known. However, Kim detects them when entering a tachyon-rich part of space, and due to a misunderstanding, Voyager captures the other scientist (who self-induces a coma-like state), and Gegen absconds with Chakotay. Voyager notices the genetic link too, and discovers that the closest earth species to the Voth are the long-extinct Hadrosaurs.

Shortly after making this discovery, Voyager is captured by a technologically-advanced Voth city-ship: the ruling government of the Voth feels threatened by Gegen's theory that they weren't actually native to the delta quadrant, but were actually refugees from Earth. Gegen returns with Chakotay to stand trial, and refuses to speak out against his own research until the Voth leader makes it clear that she will destroy Voyager if he does not. Before departing, Chakotay gifts Gegen with a small globe of Earth, and urges him to keep fighting the good fight.

I love the science fiction here. Sure, it's a bit odd that there's no evidence in the fossil record of a species that is capable of interstellar travel, but Chakotay does a decent job of explaining that away as a result of tectonic activity. I'd be surprised if a species with that much tech were so isolated on a planet, but who knows, maybe they were better suited for atmospheric conditions caused by a prominent volcano on their particular continent. The details are good too: the Voth's closest analogue, the Parasaurolophus happens to be a species for which we've only found a handful of fossils, which meshes nicely with the habitat destruction explanation.

Of course, there's no evidence of the kind of quills that the Voth have (but those could have escaped fossilization), and I would have liked for the Voth to use some of the horn-like noises that the Parasauralophus was likely to be capable of. There's a pet sci-fi idea I've had, and I can't think of a show that has explored it, that would have been nice as a component of this episode: the hadrosaurs were herbivores. How would being a non-predatory sentient being inform their culture? Maybe it doesn't: there are plenty of present-day herbivores that are capable of great violence, but usually in defense. Maybe Gegen's cautious approach to Voyager is just that: the herbivore instinct in action. Did I mention that this is a great episode?

The Galileo/Inquisition-parable aspect of the episode is a wee bit ham-fisted, but definitely compelling. At least it was a slight variation to have the Voth's "doctrine" be a product of societal order rather than directly the result of religion. Certainly, any human endeavor that places rhetoric ahead of fact is capable of committing the atrocities that the Inquisition did. This story also has my favorite kind of non-happy ending, one that leaves a glimmer of hope that, off-camera, the protagonists will keep working for the advancement of truth.

I'm also currently watching Earth 2, a short-lived major network sci-fi series where Earth is barely habitable, and a group of colonists have set out to establish a new home on an earth-like planet. Probably the most interesting part for me is that, since most of humanity is stuck in space stations, there's a very sinister amount of government control. If someone's controlling the air you breathe then that power's going to go to their head. Similarly, the very controlling Voth society is also based on a space-borne city. I think that's a nice touch, just in the background of the episode without much attention being called to it.

There's only one sour note for me: when Janeway is in the holodeck, reconstructing the Earth-bound Voth ancestors, she asks the computer to extrapolate the "most likely" result of evolution for the Parasaurolophus (incidentally, the holodeck model is waaaaay too small), like there's some sort of genetic destiny (a la Threshold). That's really not how evolution works, guys. If you don't have environmental conditions, you don't have evolution. Then again, if there's any more convincing argument for teaching evolution in schools than the terrible understanding of it on the part of the Voyager writers, I haven't heard it.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: My favorite episodes are the ones that I mull over for hours afterwards, research on wikipedia, and mull over some more. Great science-fiction, great story. This is a new #1.

S3 E22: Real Life

The Doctor creates a holographic family to come home to, but when Kes and Torres meet them they are unimpressed: he has created a "too perfect" family. He allows Torres to adjust the program, and immediately things start going downhill; his wife is harried and overworked, his daughter is a brat, and his son wants to run away and kill people and be a Klingon. Things spiral out of control when his daughter is injured on the Paresi Squares court (field?) and sustains a fatal head injury. At first the Doctor cannot face the program anymore, but eventually he builds up the resolve to see it through.

There is also a B-plot about Paris getting lost in an astral eddy, but it exists entirely to fill up time and give the Doctor a chance to rant about people taking unnecessary risks (in connection with his holographic daughter's own injury). Not much of substance there, but the special effect is reasonably cool I guess.

I'm... this episode is trying really hard. I know the heart's in the right place, but it just doesn't do anything for me. These are Fake Problems. If they introduced a character for the Doctor to get attached to, one that isn't just a simulation of a character, maybe I could get behind that. Now, maybe it's just not for me; I'll admit to seeking out a certain amount of escapism in my entertainment. Life is hard enough, real life is real enough. I see people die. I see families mourn their loved ones. I honestly don't really need that in my entertainment too - especially when it isn't even real for the not-real characters I'm watching.

None of the quotes in memory alpha suggest that this next part of my reaction is actually what the writers are going for, but this episode feels like a jab at TNG. Part of Roddenberry's requirements for Trek was that there was not supposed to be serious conflict between the members of the crew. That's hard for a lot of writers, considering that it seems to be a rule that drama means that people have to behave unprofessionally towards each other. I've even seen it be argued that not having conflict between the major recurring characters is a flat-out bad thing. I loved every minute of it. The TNG crew was composed of professional people acting appropriately; an example which I strive to emulate and encourage in my own life.

Not that I didn't also love Battlestar Galactica, which is all conflict all the time among everyone forever. And I also loved DS9, which I feel strikes a careful balance between disharmony and behaving like adults: there were disagreements between people with radically different world-views, but the characters were good about acting maturely about it. Voyager has walked an odd line, with its premise including a band of terrorists as part of the crew, but not actually utilizing that idea very much. They typically will try to include some internal discord, but then back off at the last minute, or even just forget all about it. That the writers seem to have backed off in terms of their use of intra-crew conflict is probably all the evidence I should need to see that this plot isn't really a dig at TNG, but it still feels that way.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: I'm sure there are people out there for whom this episode is a favorite. I think I can understand that, and I'll even give it a couple points for that, but it really just isn't for me.

S3 E21: Before and After

Kes wakes up in sickbay, very visibly aged and with total amnesia, amongst an Ocampan child and a fully-haired Doctor. She begins jumping backwards in time at irregular intervals, learning about her life in reverse-order; due to an experimental life-extending procedure, temporal radiation that Kes accrued at point in time that is after the present but before she reaches nine years old. On her trip, she gradually gathers the necessary information for stopping the process (which the Doctor manages to implement in the show's current time), but it does not work immediately, and she keeps jumping back until the point where she is a single cell splitting. For some reason, at that point she begins moving forward in time again until she is back at the present, and the Doctor finishes purging her of the radiation.

It's a bit bittersweet, watching this episode and knowing that Kes is leaving. It would have actually have been a decent send-off for her, chronicling events that could have happened if she had stuck around - and perhaps would have been more potent if she slipped through their fingers and became erased from the timeline (instead of hitting the reset button). Staying with Voyager would have indeed been the ultimate cause of her demise.

I am growing quite weary of major plot elements being resolved off-screen or accidentally. Here, it is Kes' loss of her memory of the present - she just miraculously gets it back when the radiation is gone. Not having any recognition of the characters around her as she goes backwards is a large part of what makes the plot work (or, at least, what makes the plot take a whole hour to resolve). It also continues a running alzheimer's theme in Voyager, one which I've praised on more than one occasion. To have her remember everything right away cheapens her experiences in the episode, all in the name of an easy to wrap-up ending.

The style of backwards time-shifting reminded me a great deal of a Sliders episode, which happens to be the result of both episodes drawing inspiration from the same idea. If you take time as a dimension, with properties similar to that of height, depth, and width, we seem to only travel one direction along that dimension, like a point that moves perpetually down an X-axis. In the Sliders episode, the group travels to a parallel earth where human perception is moving in the other direction. But since having the characters walk around in a world that is moving in reverse would be cost-prohibitive, that difference is expressed in discrete time-jumps, Kes-style, where the characters experience a chunk of time that moves in their own direction, then jump back to the next lump of time. I understand the technical and financial limitations that caused the writers of both shows to use that method, but the Sliders version has bothered me for a long time as not representing the fundamental idea very well - a disappointment that has seeped into my reaction to this episode.

One more thing: in my travels/research while working on this project, I've encountered the argument that having a nine-year-lifespan species is a bad idea - I disagree with that, but I'd expect more insect-like characteristics (frenzied bursts of activity, single-minded purpose, etc) out of such a character. More specifically I have seen arguments that, after it is established that Ocampans only give birth once per lifetime, the species would die out in a short set of generations. That would be true if they only gave birth to one child at a time, but it didn't seem like much of a stretch to assume that Ocampans would, as a result, give birth to whole litters at a time (despite only being equipped with two mammaries). I can only imagine that the writers received fan reactions to that effect, but here all the Ocampan births that are depicted here of single children. It's a small thing, but they had the chance to correct an internal consistency oversight and passed it up.

Watchability 3/5

Bottom Line: The last two episodes, while still arriving at the same score, took very different paths. Favorite Son didn't aspire to much, but stumbled into being more interesting than it was trying to be. This one aspired to much more, but came up quite short in too many ways for me.

S3 E20: Favorite Son

Kim starts behaving erratically: he opens fire on a friendly (Nasari) ship (they later discover that the ship was charging weapons), grows some face-spots, and leads Voyager to a world (Taresia) where the inhabitants defend them from the new enemies that Kim made. The new friends, on the other hand, have spots just like Kim's, and identify him as one of their young that they implanted into a female on earth in the past, a technique similar to that of the founders. The Taresians are almost all female, and faun over Kim, urging him to stay with them and have sex a lot. Voyager makes a side trip to negotiate with the Nasari, who are no longer angry at them because they no longer have Kim on board; the Nasari hate the Taresians, and warn Voyager that people who come "home" to Taresia never leave. Voyager is prevented from returning to Taresia by a forcefield, and Kim, suspicious that Voyager hasn't returned, starts snooping. He finds the dessicated corpse of the only other male he's seen, and realizes that the males are killed in the mating process. The Taresians, now sinister and evil, surround him, but Voyager, aware that Kim is not really Taresian, beams him out at the last second.

Per memory alpha, this story wasn't originally supposed to be about preying mantis women. Kim was supposed to actually turn out to really be a Taresian, and maybe even keep the spots. It would have been a story about whether Kim would want to stay in his new home or keep going with Voyager. You can see it in the Doctor's scenes - in the first one, he says that he has reviewed Kim's old scans, and they confirm what the Taresians are saying; in the second one, he says the opposite, in a manner that doesn't even recognize the previous statements. I'm not sure that that tale would have necessarily been better. After all, it seems like a recipe for hemming and hawing for an hour, angsting over choices. Also, they'd be encountering yet another fast-track to the alpha quadrant species, which is okay once in a while, but too often and I'm just asking "why aren't they home yet."

The story we do get is pretty silly, but has that TOS feel to it - not just in the plot, but even the costumes and the sets. Ever since Blood Fever, when I noted the lack of sexery, it seems to have been a lot more common as a theme. Here it is of the "don't sex, it will kill you" moral-type, which is actually a pretty common way of including it in an otherwise family show: after all, any time Angel has sex in Buffy (the show... well, I guess that phrase works for the character as well), he loses his soul. Honestly, it seems like a pretty cheap way to go for a ratings boost while having a "message" that gives the show a chance to escape censorship. But this episode seems to be more about temptation in general than just sex = death; temptation with sex, sure, but also with drugs, the seduction of luxury, of being the center of attention, of feeling special. Kim talks about feeling special in particular, that he always fantasized about being more than just a normal human kid growing up. That's part of what, in my opinion, makes superhero stories so enduringly popular.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Silly premise, another Beam-out Ex Machina ending, but it has some elements of interest to cling to. It's odd, the last three episodes are apparently well known as being a "trilogy of terror"; a triple-header of legendarily bad Voyager episodes. They certainly weren't great, but they're nothing compared to the love triangle arc, and certainly aren't the lowest point of the season.

S3 E19: Rise

Voyager is helping a planet defend itself from an onslaught of a series of asteroids when it gets the message that a scientist on the surface has found that this may not be a completely naturally occurring phenomenon. Tuvok, Neelix, and a representative from the planet's government arrive in a shuttle to pick him up, but the shuttle is damaged on the way down and the team must attempt to repair a space elevator in order to get back into transporter range. The motley crew begins to fall apart though; the scientist is poisoned, a squatter and a miner don't trust anyone, and Neelix has an emotional outburst at Tuvok. The government agent turns out to be a bad guy, and tries to kill Tuvok when he, at Neelix's behest, tries to recover the scientist's findings from the roof. Upon their return to Voyager, it is revealed that the findings prove something that Voyager already knew: that the asteroids were being used by a faction that attempts to simulate natural disasters in order to get the population of the planet they're trying to invade to evacuate first. Voyager disables the enemy ship with codes from the new intelligence, and the invaders are foiled.

Wooo! Science fiction in Voyager! Go space elevators! Sure, it's only a backdrop to the story, but I'm happy that the writers found a sciencey idea and included it. Also cool: the aliens that invade by faking natural disasters. It is a pretty neat tactic that would work well with all the less technologically inclined places littering the delta quadrant.

The central conflict of Neelix versus Tuvok though, that's frustrating. It's another example of the writers making a character more obnoxious at the start of the episode so that he or she has more room to grow. Now, Tuvok has always been pretty dismissive and intolerant of Neelix, but he has shifted into high gear for this episode. And let's be completely honest, Neelix is pretty dismissive and intolerant of Tuvok, in his own way. Dismissive in that he is constantly assuming the centuries-long personal commitment (to say nothing of the species-wide commitment) to logic and emotional control is just something he needs to tell the right joke to break. He is constantly underestimating Tuvok's resolve to adhere to his ideals in the most infantile of ways. It is little wonder why Tuvok does not want to spend time with Neelix, ever, under any circumstances. But Neelix is so willfully disgusted with Tuvok's way of life that he tries, with Borg-like relentlessness, to insinuate himself into Tuvok's daily routine, and rob him of the precious hours that he can spend without his inane prattle. Yet, for some reason, he's supposed to be the protagonist here.

Jeri Taylor, one of the producers (but not the author), has this to say: "'Rise' just never quite came together in the way we saw it. It had a wonderful high concept idea, but it had to be anchored by what was going on between Neelix and Tuvok, and I just don't think that came to the forefront in the way that it should have." Really? Almost all of the screen time went to pretending that Neelix was in some way worthwhile. The problem isn't that it wasn't at the forefront, the problem is that you spent any time on it at all. I'm should be thrilled that you actually talked to a guy who heard of a science thing ever. But no, you ruined it.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: Okay, the Tuvok/Neelix stuff isn't the entire episode, and there was some pretty cool sci-fi stuff.

S3 E18: Darkling

Voyager makes a stop at a planet to trade medical supplies for knowledge about the journey ahead with the local travelers. Kes, now separated from Neelix, begins a relationship with one of the natives, and starts questioning whether she should stay on Voyager. Meanwhile, the Doctor, experimenting with adding to his personality by incorporating traits from various notable historical characters, malfunctions and starts by trying to kill Kes' new friend. He moves on to torturing Torres, dissecting the holograms of the historical figures, abducting Kes, and trying to buy passage off the planet. Kes appeals to him to stop, but instead he throws them both off a cliff. Miraculously, the transporter beam that saves them also cures the Doctor.

I approve of the trading post, the insights we get into the culture of the travelers, and Voyager's mission here in general. These activities are what Voyager should be up to all the time, given their circumstances. Not that they need to show this kind of stop any more frequently than they are (or, at least, have done so this season), but it is a nice reinforcement of the life that a crew which is stranded in strange lands must be like.

I've often thought that, as a character with only nine years to live, Kes should be significantly more flighty. Her learning aptitude and thirst for discovery and novelty have satisfied that desire to an extent, but it seemed strange for her to want to be tied down with Neelix. That said, after the first two and a half seasons, the Neelix/Kes relationship deserved a bit more closure than the off-hand line here. Sure, I'm thrilled to avoid a four episode arc of Neelix going through a goth phase and moping around listening to Evanescence on his iPod, but those weren't the only two options out there. Yes, writers, I'm sure the focus groups told you how much they hated Parturition, but just dropping the couple is not the only way to solve the problem. This isn't just about character growth, it's about writer growth. If the writers don't learn how to write their way out of a bad relationship, I still won't trust them to make a new one.

Still, this direction is a better one for Kes, so I'm happy with that. I'd even have been happy for the whole episode to be based on that, instead of the Doctor-goes-psycho plot that we got instead. I love the Doctor, he's great at playing the Doctor, but I'm starting to realize that he doesn't have a whole lot of acting range. Sure, the new contacts make him look creepy, but instead of coming across as sadistic and amoral, he just looks like the Doctor acting goofy. The text-book Jekyll and Hyde madman stuff doesn't help by being really stale. I just rolled my eyes for the whole second half of the episode.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: It's actually pretty rare for the ending to be the worst part of the episode: usually, I struggle through the first 25 minutes for a chance to be rewarded for making it to the end. No luck here.

S3 E17: Unity

Chakotay, on a shuttle trip with a red-shirt, responds to a Federation distress signal emanating from a nearby planet. He finds two warring factions of former Borg there, and is injured, but a cooperative led by a human (Riley Frazier - female, despite the name) rescues him. The only way to save him from death is temporarily linking him to a small collective, which repairs his neural damage and also gives him a look into the minds of the other people there. He and Frazier bond (sex) after the experience, and she tells him that their best hope to restore peace to the planet is to use their nearby, damaged and inoperative ship to restore the link between the people there.

Voyager arrives, after inspecting the ship for themselves, and Janeway is skeptical of this plan, especially after seeing first hand how easily the drones on the ship could be reactivated. After consulting with Chakotay, who is optimistic but also cautious, she still decides to deny the cooperative aid in this plan. After Chakotay makes his final farewells, the cooperative is attacked, and they, in desperation, reactivate the link with him and use him to power-up the Borg ship. The whole ship comes to life, but the cooperative, having gotten what they wanted, activate the self-destruct, saving Voyager.

One of the most compelling (and ultimately, sinister) things about the Borg is that they aren't outright evil. They aren't a Villain, in the capital "V" sense of the word. They're a snowball effect, of what probably started out as perfectly good intentions, but have ballooned out of control. And, at the same time, they are perfectly in control, they aren't off-the-rails, there's just no one at the helm anymore. The existence of a Borg Queen somewhat diminishes the no-one-at-the-helm part, but First Contact's use of the Borg Queen was sufficiently vague as to allow me to still see her as just a manifestation of the hive. Kind of a universal Locutus, for situations where they aren't hell-bent on assimilating one particular faction. Even the existence of the Borg Queen/Locutus role, a misguided attempt to put a happy-face on a civilization's impending doom, reinforces the Borg as the ultimate good intention gone awry bad guy.

This episode captures that aspect of the Borg square in the face, from a brand new angle. The cooperative (I keep wanting to write collaborative for some reason), they're good people. Chakotay sees it. He's inside their heads. All they want to do is save their own lives and stop ethnic warfare while they're at it. It's just a small price to pay to co-opt Chakotay against his will, briefly. They'll give him back and save his ship too. No harm done, right? Right? Chakotay says: "I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power." Fantastic stuff, almost an origin story for the Borg without actually going back in time. It is consistent with what we know about the Borg without being tied down by history.

Robert Duncan McNeil (Paris) directed this episode, and stated that he was trying to portray Frazier as the devil, seductive in her evil. That is completely not what I got from the episode, which is great: once upon a time, a friend and I watched an almost completely wordless, feature-length movie by the name Koyaanisqatsi. It is just a series of beautiful natural landscape scenes gradually progressing into scenes set in modern city-scapes, teeming with time-lapsed patterns of human life. My friend and I both took from the film the message that you can find natural beauty even in places where it has been supplanted by skyscrapers - but the goal, based on the few lines of text at the end, was to show that humans are living a life out of balance (the meaning of the word Koyaanisqatsi) in their grotesque, unnatural cities. I find that divergence to be the most powerful and compelling part of the movie. I didn't see it as a failure on the part of the creators that they did not convince me that they were right, I saw it as a triumph that they made something so complex that different people could watch it and come to different conclusions. I think that you guys can probably see how all that might relate to the difference of opinion between me and McNeil about the message of the episode.

What else... there's the sex I suppose. After noting that there'd been no cut-away sex, this is the second episode in a row to have it. Also odd that it involves Chakotay, whom the writers haven't seemed to have given up on shipping with Janeway yet; that could be seen as commentary on casual sex, but it would be a whole lot braver if they'd had Janeway be the one to get some. Just a little nit to pick in an otherwise fantastic show.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: Head and shoulders above the rest of this season, even well above the fours. I recall later Borg installments bothering me, so when this one was so great, it was a very pleasant surprise.

S3 E16: Blood Fever

Vorik, a Vulcan who has had a line or two in the background of several previous episodes, delivers a dispassionate, but clearly throughly considered, marriage proposal to Torres (I particularly like the line about Vulcans being one of the few species on board who were strong enough for Klingon sex). She is flabbergasted, and turns him down; he quickly becomes angry and violent, so Torres is simply required to dislocate his jaw. The Doctor deduces that Vorik is going through pon farr - the Vulcan mating drive that occurs once every seven years - but Vorik is reluctant to discuss it, and opposed to any medical treatment to stop it, requesting that he instead be confined to quarters for meditation. Consulting Tuvok does not get the Doctor much further, as Tuvok is similarly reticent on the subject.

Torres, Neelix, and Paris enter a series of caves in the mines below, and when Neelix's equipment malfunctions, Torres flips out, biting Tom as she runs off into the caves. Turns out that, when Vorik attacked her, he telepathically induced pon farr in her as well. After a run-in with the natives of the caves, Paris and Torres are stranded together, deeper in the caves. Torres is literally throwing herself at him, and Paris barely fending her off. Once they escape from the caves, and meet up with Tuvok and Chakotay, they discover that, for some reason, they are cut off from communicating with Voyager. Torres' situation has become dire: according to Tuvok, not allowing her to either (a) have sex, (b) fight someone, potentially to the death, in a duel, or (c) exercise precise Vulcan meditative techniques would kill her. That being the case, given Torres' disinclination towards meditation and very violent temper, Paris is essentially ordered to do his duty as a starfleet officer, and pursue option (a).

The Doctor had been working on "meditative aids" for Vorik in order to help him through this tough time, and had seemed to have achieved a degree of success with a holographic Vulcan with whom Vorik could... relieve his stress. However, his efforts were ultimately a failure, as it was Vorik who had cut off communication with the away team, in preparation for claiming Torres in person. He catches Paris and Torres in each others arms, and challenges Paris. Torres won't stand to be left out of a fight, so she takes Tom's place, and she and Vorik beat each other senseless until their pon farr drives are satisfied.

Hrm, three paragraphs of plot recapping. Must attempt to be less wordy in the future.

I like the relatively subtle jabs at abstinence only inadequate sex education. Vulcans are as reasonable a species as any to do it with, since their distaste for (or, at the very least, sublimation of) emotions would naturally lead them to be hesitant to discuss pon farr, particularly with outsiders. Presumably, Vulcans in the alpha quadrant have many more Vulcan authority figures to turn to when they are in the throes of it, so the silence probably at least appears to be more adequate there. Here on Voyager though, the shortcomings of the deal-with-it-when-you-get-there policy are highlighted clearly. However, the Doctor's evaluation of the Vulcans' methods as "victorian" also turns my attention to the general topic of Sex in Star Trek.

Unlike certain other sci-fi or fantasy shows, Trek tends to "suggest" that sex occurs with sly scene cuts, typically during commercial breaks. That's okay with me: as much as I appreciate that Battlestar enjoys not pulling any punches, not every show needs to do that, especially with non-cable censorship being what it is. Plus, plenty of people in TNG and DS9 manage to get busy off-camera - sex in general seems to be a pretty casual thing in Trek. Sure, it is rarely outright discussed*, but that's part of what gives it that casual air, that it is such a non-issue that no one has anything to say about it. Personally, I think that's a pretty brilliant way to make a comment on the issue... without making a comment so that there's nothing to be censored.

*I guess there's Worf and his conservative Klingon views on it, but even that part of that relationship's culture-gap isn't beaten into the ground. It's just a small part of the road towards compromise and understanding for that pair.

So far though, Voyager has been extra chaste. Aside from Janeway and Paris' lizard-form baby-makery, instead of the cut-away we've had the cut-off: either someone is called away just in time, or they make some discovery that distracts them. Even here, amidst all the fanservice-y Torres/Paris bits, Tom plays the nobleman until he is ordered to fornicate, then gets cut-off. Voyager, so far, has occupied a strange space in the Trek-Sex continuum, since it still has the sex-appeal female character (Kes, whose lack of character direction in the beginning of the show was the probable result of the writers not having one for her except to stand there and look pretty), and will again with Seven of Nine, but is being extra shy about characters performing the act. Heck, Neelix and Kes don't even share quarters. Maybe the writers are just that afraid of losing their giant Salt Lake City audience.

Well, Vorik does have sex with that hologram, which is the first time someone actually uses the holodeck for such a purpose (more caveats: it is assumed that that activity was commonplace in the holosuites in Quark's bar, but I can't recall any times it was nearly so directly alluded to). The Doctor certainly has nothing against recreational sex in this case. Maybe I'm wrong, and this episode is a return to form, not just a ratings-grab. We'll see.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Generally happy with getting more info on pon farr, and the episode itself is pretty fun. Despite all that raving about Voyager being chaste, and the Paris/Torres stuff being fanservice, I think it was a tastefully done walking-of-the-line. I also enjoyed the teaser at the end about the return of the Borg, Lost in Space-style.

S3 E15: Coda

Janeway and Chakotay, in a shuttlecraft returning to Voyager, are struck down in a planet's atmosphere, where Janeway nearly dies from her injuries. Vidiians then arrive and kill them both. After dying, they find themselves back on the shuttle in the middle of a previous conversation; the situation seems similar to a temporal causality loop but each iteration is slightly different from the last. Janeway eventually becomes disconnected from the action, and watches as the Doctor pronounces her dead. This time, she is not returned to the shuttle, and she desperately attempts to make her presence known to the crew. Kes is able to briefly sense her, but eventually gives up on her.

Her dead father appears to her, and informs her that she too is dead, and must come to terms with that. Despite attending her own funeral, and watching as her crew begins to move on, Janeway cannot accept what he is telling her. He becomes more insistent, then angry, and Janeway suspects that things are not as they seem. Her "father" turns out to be an alien who preys on the nearly dead, hoping to coax them into his "matrix" where he can feed on their souls. Janeway resists, and is resuscitated by the Doctor.

Honestly, for the first half of the episode I was just thinking to myself "Okay Braga, what are you up to this time?" I was surprised to find that it was actually a Jeri Taylor episode, but I'm still not sure what the relevance of the first half of the episode is. When I was watching it, it felt like the time was just being filled with bizarre stuff to put off getting into the meat of the episode - after seeing the whole thing, I am even more confident that that was what was going on.

The meat of the episode is fairly substantial in this case. It is an examination of grief, loss, and moving on, from the perspective of both the ones who have lost and the one who is lost. I believe that somewhere in this sea of text I call a blog that I've mentioned how much I like these elements in The Next Phase; if I have not, consider it done now. The "appearing at your own funeral" thing works its magic again here, but in its own way: no trombone solos.

The aliens are both sinister and oddly comforting. I mean, sure, he's going to feed on you in his matrix, but hey, you're dying anyways. As long as you're done with this existence thing, would it be so much of a hassle to help out some hungry aliens on your way out? Sure, he's kind of a jerk here for trying to keep Janeway dead, but you've gotta eat. The suggestion that maybe these aliens are responsible for all near-death experiences doesn't do much for me, but I guess it isn't really offensive either.

The Janeway-Chakotay relationship keeps getting nudged along here, and as much as they'd make a decent couple (Janeway does some of her most natural acting in scenes with him), I have to say the snail's pace is a bit tedious. Especially so because I also know nothing comes of it.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Interesting, if padded, episode, that has some of the meat I've been waiting for.

S3 E14: Alter Ego

Kim approaches Tuvok with a pressing concern: he has fallen in love with a holodeck character (Marayna), so he wants Tuvok's help with repressing his emotions. Tuvok counsels avoidance, which is made difficult by Neelix throwing a luau in the same program in which the character in question resides. Intending only to make an appearance for Janeway's sake, Tuvok shows up to the party, and is singled out by Marayna immediately. She shows a great deal of interest in him, having done an unhologramly (can you believe spellcheck doesn't think that's a word?) amount of research into Vulcans in general - and Tuvok specifically.

Meanwhile, Voyager has entered a magical space phenomena an inversion nebula that is unusually stable, but finds that system malfunctions are preventing it from leaving. After an unfortunate scene in which Kim confronts Tuvok for spending so much time with Marayna, she takes a decidely sinister turn. Though Tuvok attempted to delete her to prove his intentions to Kim, she overrides the Doctor's mobile emitter and confronts him in his quarters. It becomes clear that she is being transmitted to Voyager from a nearby, cloaked vessel; once the beam is traced back to its source, Tuvok is transported there in the hopes of limiting further jeopardy for Voyager. Marayna is the lone caretaker for the nebula, extending its life and beauty for others to enjoy, and becoming increasingly forlorn herself. She saw in Tuvok a kindred spirit, alone even in a crowded starship, and only out of compassion for him could she bring herself to ultimately let him go.

The first half of this episode is completely unwatchable. How old is Kim, sixteen? He's a bright kid, I'd expect him to have a little bit more insight into his own behavior at this point. The "Tuvok, tell me how to suppress my emotions because I'm so sad!" bit is so incredibly tween emo that I simply could not believe what I was watching. Worse, after Chakotay's unbearably patronizing line in the beginning of the show, the one about emotions being the point of life, I became increasingly concerned that that would be the show's message - that Tuvok would be taught an important lesson about emotion by bonding with the hologram and that Logic Isn't Everything.

Instead, for the second half, we get a poignant story about the lonesome caretaker, who admires Tuvok and his approach to life. They bond, certainly, but there is no moralizing about how great emotion is. The message isn't that logic is bad, or that rationality should take a back seat to passion, but that passion and gregariousness are not prerequisites for fellowship. In fact, I'd say that is is Tuvok's emotional control that even allows him to retain his compassion for Marayna after she acts violently towards the crew. The last parts of this episode are subtle and touching, ending with Tuvok and Kim reconciling over a game of Vulcan chess.

It has been around for several episodes, so I guess I should also talk about Neelix's resort program, since it plays a reasonably big role here. I don't really mind it; they seem to have abandoned replicator rations at this point, but the use of a holodeck as a relaxation area for multiple people at a time seems much more efficient than previous uses.

Robert Picardo (the Doctor) directed this episode, and his only appearance is on the holodeck, flanked by two lovely women, pontificating on the life of a leisure-hologram. A quote from him: "Since I started directing, I've had the chance to use myself the way I prefer to be used, which is strictly as a sex object. I'm hoping some of the other directors will take note!"

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Great ending, but I really can't justify only rating the ending when the lead in is unbearable.

S3 E13: Fair Trade

Neelix scurries about this ship, attempting to make himself useful, but mostly annoying people in the process. Voyager arrives at the edge of a vast, unknown, dangerous part of space, stopping off at an outpost to pick up supplies before venturing in. On the station, Neelix meets an old friend (Wixiban, a fellow Talaxian), to whom he reveals that he's worried that he has outlived his usefulness to the Voyager crew. He doesn't know anything about the area beyond this station, and is gripped with an urgency to procure a map of the space ahead.

Wixiban suggests that he could help, but he would need some help from Neelix in exchange. Neelix doesn't ask many questions, which is unfortunate because the "help" involves assisting with the completion of a drug deal and killing someone (in self defense). Neelix is appropriately appalled, but agrees to keep silent out of a sense of camaraderie for his old friend. Wracked with guilt as the situation begins to spiral out of control, Neelix hatches a plan to come clean to the station supervisor and capture the drug dealers... and it works! However, Neelix is heavily injured, and the truth is revealed to Janeway; she lectures him on his responsibility to the truth, and Neelix learns important lessons about lying and self-worth.

A lot of the elements of this episode are actually pretty compelling, and I'm sure they looked great on paper: the wild-west-esque station on the edge of uncharted space, its authoritarian commander who tries to organize the chaos of the station, Neelix's reasonably rational fears that he won't be useful anymore. I'm always happy to see a different actor's take on Talaxians too, it gives me a little insight into what parts of Neelix's character are cultural and what parts are personal. Even the drugs are a unique twist; there is very little mention of drug use in the Trek universe, even by non-Federation people. Even though it isn't really a theme here, more of an incidental part of the plot, I'm glad to have that issue get some screen time.

Despite all those elements, I found myself very disappointed in the execution of this episode. What could have been an exploration of the station's culture becomes a rather plain backdrop to a very simple story about lying being wrong. There is a close parallel to this episode in The First Duty (TNG, season 5), where Wesley also faces the choice between honesty and fellowship. What, in my opinion, made that episode work so well was there was actually a dispute between the writers as to what path Wesley really would choose. Because the writing staff had people championing both options, the final episode came out much more even-handed, with genuine arguments from both sides making it on screen. In Fair Trade, it is pretty clear from step one that Neelix was making bad choices, and the capstone patronizing lecture from Janeway seals the deal.

Neelix's motivations, though, those were good. Not only does it give Neelix some more depth, but it adds to the sense of progress for the ship. It had to happen eventually that they'd move outside Neelix's sphere of knowledge; that it has finally occurred makes me feel like they're getting somewhere.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: It actually happens pretty frequently that I come up with a watchability number immediately after watching the episode, only to write the post and find I've made an argument for a different score. This one went from a 2 to a 3. Large parts of the Neelix-being-caught-in-a-lie plot were very difficult to watch, but on reflection there's more good than I initially gave it credit for.

S3 E12: Macrocosm

After conducting a strange first contact, Neelix and Janeway return to Voyager in a shuttle, only to find that the ship has been overrun by giant, flying viruses. Neelix is quickly overcome, leaving Janeway to get her Rambo on. Stripped down to a tank top and a phaser-rifle, she and the Doctor work on a way to combat the viruses before the ship and its crew are completely lost.

This episode's set up is highly reminiscent of Genesis, another stereotypical Brannon Braga episode. They are stereotypical in that they are both episodes that are founded on terrible science in order to generate a modestly entertaining product. I think we should start on the science, so that I can end on a (relatively) high note. Viruses are fascinating. They are constructed in a fundamentally different way from most other biologic entities in the world around us, because they aren't made of cells. The idea that a viruses could be used as the building blocks for life, instead of cells, allowing for giant super-viruses, is great! However, rather than take a science idea and build on it, the writers were more interested in having creepy, magical, flying blobs that run around trying to sting you. All I'm asking is that the writers crack open an encyclopedia, or talk to a biologist, or something, anything.

That said, the episode does a decent job of being a sci-fi/horror/action movie. I don't want the writers making all the episodes like this, or even more than one per season or so, but if the result is well-executed like this one, then I guess I'm for it. It was nice to see Janeway as a capable action hero, and the events were paced effectively. Since there was less dialogue in this episode than most, and there were several new angles on familiar locales, I spent a fair amount of time examining the interior of Voyager. It certainly feels more cramped (particularly the hallways) than the Enterprise, which works well not only to set the mood in this episode, but in general it gives the ship a more utilitarian, efficient look.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Decent action episode, but beware of the (continued) bad science!

S3 E11: The Q and the Grey

While investigating a rare series of supernovae, Voyager is again visited by Q - and this time he wants Janeway to have his child. No, he's not trying to pawn off a baby he somehow came into the possession of, he wants to impregnate Janeway. A second, female Q arrives as Janeway is turning Q down for the eighth time, and it is revealed that the solar explosions are a side effect of a war within the Q Continuum. Q abducts Janeway to show her first-hand; this time, instead of a dust-swept shop in the middle of nowhere, the Continuum is rendered as a Civil War battlefield. Janeway does not share Q's hope that a human-Q hybrid child would be an effective quick-fix for this war (that was started by Q's part in the death of another Q in Death Wish) - but is equally confident that a child that is the product of two Qs would be. She is unable to convince the opposing faction, who captures her and Q and plans to execute them, but fortunately the Voyager crew shows up (with the help of the female Q) in the nick of time and uses the Civil War weaponry to defeat the Q and save the day.

John DeLancie is as delightful as ever. He essentially crashes the constant condescension awards show that is Janeway's captaincy, to tell her that he is very happy for her, and that he'll let her finish, but that he is the most condescending being of all time. These moments are very satisfying to me; Janeway's arrogant, patronizing attitude is so pervasive, so unrelentless, that when Q shows up and calls her Kathy, when he feeds her the cheapest lines in the book and expects them to work on someone so simple, when he just tries to buy her love with a puppy, I squee with joy. Suzie Plakson (Female Q), on the other hand, would be significantly more tolerable if she never opened her mouth again, or even appeared on screen again. Okay, that's not completely fair. I don't remember her being bad at K'Ehleyr, but in this role she takes the over-the-top Q-style presentation and flattens it, to the point where it is neither flamboyant nor subdued nor worth watching.

In my Death Wish review, I neatly categorized all the Q episodes, so where does this one fall? Well, at first glance, it seems to be of the "humanity is better than gods" type. After all, Q is behaving badly, impulsively, shallowly, while the humans get a chance to moralize to him about how much better it is to be thoughtful and hard-working. But maybe it is because this episode is informed by the post-Deja Q mentality, where Q is outwardly extolling humanity's virtues, or maybe it is the whole civil war setting making the Continuum seem less god-like, but the atheist themes seem diminished her - leaving the feel-good humans-are-great stuff to stand on its own. In this episode, the Q are just another species, who just happen to be omnipotent and petty at the same time. Not that I necessarily think that this way is better or worse, but it is perceptibly different.

This is an episode that I pretty clearly remember abandoning half-way through; I recall being pretty disgusted at how goofy and unimaginative the Civil War interpretation of the Continuum seemed to me. I'm not nearly as turned off by it this time, but it is probably for the best that I didn't complete the episode originally - the solution, wherein the metaphor is stretched paper-thin to allow the Voyager crew to save the day (by force!) in the Continuum by using the "figurative" era-appropriate rifles, would have been an even bigger letdown. For me, that the end still is frustrating, but I liked the rest of the episode enough to look past it.

The episode ends with Q genuinely appreciative towards Janeway, and it seems a bit like a hollow victory without Q sending them home as a token of his appreciation. I like the interactions with Q and this crew (Chakotay is now Chuckles, and Neelix is the "bar rodent"), but it's probably just as well that there's only one Q episode left.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Q continues to entertain, but the substance is a bit diminished here.

S3 E10: Warlord

Three survivors are beamed off an unidentified, exploding alien (Illari) ship, but one dies in sickbay shortly after arrival - while that would normally disqualify him as a survivor, there are some extenuating circumstances. Kes begins behaving oddly (including brutally dumping Neelix), and reveals that she is now possessed by the consciousness of the third survivor by murdering a crew member and a delegate from the Illari homeworld. Under the influence of this new [male Illari warlord's] mind, Kes' full powers are once again unlocked, and he/she quickly overthrows the Illari government and kills its leader. The first attempt to remove the new guy's identity fails, and Tuvok is captured and Kes/Tieran attempts to torture him - with little success. Kes and Tieran are fighting an internal battle, distracting him from the second attempt (an all-out assault), which is successful.

The possession of a main character with the mind of another person in order to give him or her a chance to act in a different role is a Trek trope as old as time, but it has produced some great results in the past, and I'm reasonably happy with what we've got here, too. In general, I haven't exactly been thrilled with Kes' acting so far (her character, on the other hand, has grown on me a lot), so I was pleased to see that she could handle her part in this episode well. In particular, her conflict with Tuvok was perfectly executed, with good back-and-forth and gripping performances that underscore the subtle but significant relationship between the two. I was also very happy with the illustration of the internal conflict, with Kes and Tieran arguing inside (her? his? their?) mind, Kes with her quarters in the background and Tieran backed by his portrait - until he starts losing and his background is replaced with her quarters.

The break-up of Neelix and Kes, before we know that she is possessed, is also powerful. She gives reasons that would have been perfectly good a season ago, reasons that I was practically shouting to her through the screen at the time, but now that Neelix has calmed down a lot I sorta feel bad for him. No, not just sorta - Kes is his life. As useless as Neelix is, as much of a chump as he can be, he is completely devoted to Kes - and while Kes' reasons are still solid, and Neelix probably couldn't really grow without losing her, I do genuinely feel bad for him. I was really surprised when the denouement of the episode focused only on Kes and Tuvok, without any sort of closure for Neelix. Did she really mean what she said while possessed? I'd like to know. While it is nothing short of a triumph to get me to want to hear more about Neelix and Kes' relationship, the ending feels pretty hollow as a result.

Any time Trek messes with gender roles, or, in this case, puts a male character in a female's body, it is hard not to think of one of the glaring omissions of Trek: the lack of homosexual characters. When, early in the possession, Kes almost (but not quite!) kisses Tieran's wife/girlfriend/whatever, I became very concerned that this was going to be one of those episodes where Trek kind of, but not really, apologizes for that inadequacy. I've gotten the impression from things I've read over the years (sorry, no quotes that I could find) that part of the problem is that Roddenberry himself was not terribly open-minded on the matter. But you know what, after The Original Series, I'm willing to give him a pass on that. It was unfortunate that the absence continued into TNG, but to still - throughout the course of all of TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise - be missing any gay or lesbian crew members is inexcusable. Oh, wait, Brannon Braga has prepared an excuse in an interview on the topic:

"I think it was, not so much a young man’s [issue], it was a syndicated family show, showing at six o’clock, you know, in Salt Lake City, so you had to deal with each separate affiliate rather than one network. And things like that."

Really? Do you even know what show it is that you wrote for? Do you have any idea who it is that you were writing for? You water down your science to the point that it isn't science anymore, and you won't touch on social commentary because it is too controversial? You had a duty as the bearer of the Trek torch. You know what? I'll let Picard tell you about it:

"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based! And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!"

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: My tangential rant aside, it was fun to see Kes tackle another acting style, and we got some good character scenes which built off of it.

S3 E09: Future's End, Part II

After outsmarting Voyager once, Sterling now has the lowdown on the ship's systems and an emergency medical hologram - which he kindly equips with a mobile holo-emitter. The Voyager crew regroups and attempts to capture him by baiting him with Sarah Silverman, and briefly succeeds before he outsmarts them again. In the attempt, Chakotay and Torres are captured by some militia nuts, but Tuvok and the Doctor rescue them. Paris and Robinson (I guess I should use her character name) have a car chase in a VW bus against a tractor trailer which they believe has the timeship in it, but once again they have been outsmarted by Sterling, who prepares to fulfill his destiny by going to the future to steal more technology (and kill billions by mistake). Voyager destroys his ship at the last minute, thereby somehow restoring the timeline. The timeship pops up again, this time with its original commander, unaware of what has transpired, and transports Voyager back to its own time - and to the delta quadrant.

Well, that's a lot of outsmarting for one paragraph, but hey, the crew was being exceptionally incompetent. Nothing they did seemed to matter, except for the one stray torpedo they fired at the end. But as long as this two-parter seems to be about temporal causality, why did they even fire that shot? It was a direct parallel to the timeship's approach with Voyager in part one: "Hey you, I don't want you to do bad things by time-traveling, so I'm going to blow you up." That tactic is what got them into this whole mess, you'd think they'd have learned something. Oh, right, incompetent. But, because it is Voyager doing the shooting, the problem is solved and everything but Voyager is restored to normal, which also doesn't make sense. The writers had the option in Time and Again for Voyager to be the accidental cause of mass casualties, to teach the crew a lesson about messing with temporal mechanics lightly, but I cut them some slack then because it was only the second episode. The time for that is done.

I was annoyed that they implied that stolen technology is the reason why humans developed computers in the 20th century (for reasons I went into in the Tattoo review), but if there is one good thing about the reset button in this episode, it is that the timeship's presence on earth was (may have been?) erased. With this ending, we revert to computers being a creation of human ingenuity (at what seems to have been the same rate that the stolen technology would have delivered it).

The odd, pointless side-plot with the militia did at least point out something that demands to be explored: why doesn't Chakotay act like (or have any personal beliefs congruent with) a captain of a terrorist ship. When the lead captor delivers his ridiculous rant about the evil government and his fight against it, Chakotay begins saying "I was a freedom fighter like you too, once..." and I'm really curious where he was going with that. Does he not believe in the Maquis fight anymore? Why? Some sort of explanation would certainly be appreciated. Well, a good explanation would be appreciated. And I don't think the writers have one.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: The panning will continue until my morale improves. At least the Doctor got a mobile holo-emitter out of all this.

S3 E08: Future's End, Part I

Voyager is assailed by a Federation timeship from the 29th century - according to its captain, Voyager is involved in a time travel incident with kills billions of people in the future - so the only possible course of action is to destroy them. Voyager fends off the attack, disabling the timeship, and thrusting both ships, out of control, into a temporal vortex. Once on the other side, they find themselves orbiting 1996 earth, and begin trying to locate the timeship. Janeway and Chakotay locate the captain, who arrived thirty years earlier and is now a raving lunatic/hobo, and points them to the current owner of the timeship (Henry Starling). In the meantime, Tuvok and Paris locate a young woman who has spotted Voyager from her observatory, and befriend her by helping her not get killed by Sterling's goons. Janeway and Chakotay are captured by Sterling, who reveals that he used the 29th century tech he stole to start the 20th century computer revolution. When they beam out, Starling manages to download Voyager's computer over the transporter beam - including the Doctor. To be continued...

Oh, and also Kes and Neelix are transfixed by soap operas the whole time.

The introduction of what are essentially "time police" into the Trek universe is fairly troubling. Where were they when other crews have recklessly traveled through time? And why won't they talk to Voyager first, before coming in, guns blazing. Even if by the 29th century Federation is sinister and evil, you'd think that they'd be a bit more practical - it would be a lot easier to convince a 24th century Starfleet captain that it would be a bad idea to kill billions than it would be to disintegrate her ship and risk being the paradoxical cause of your own disaster.

Wait, was the whole "catch" of this episode obvious from the first five minutes? It drives me crazy to see the writers pat themselves on the back by saying episodes like these are "high concept" (they love that phrase in particular), when the episodes themselves aren't terribly complicated. It is even worse when they say that the reason why an episode like Parallax failed is that it was too complicated. Here's a clue: when your audience is composed of nerds, write for nerds. If they don't understand it, they'll look it up. Parallax wasn't too complicated, it was too dumbed-down - if they'd actually used the more complicated science of black holes rather than switching to "magical space phenomena" so that they could just do whatever they want, it could have been a 5/5. In a world where a movie like Memento can be a commercial success, writers can be more adventurous with their complicated plots. The Voyager writers seem to prefer to play it safe - where safe means "hemorrhaging viewers."

There are some reasonably entertaining scenes in this episode, even though a lot of it feels kind of been-there-done-that. Oh my, don't we look strange to outsiders, tee hee! Although the "Kes & Neelix watch soaps" part was used as a pat-TV-writers-on-the-back moment, watching them drink in the ridiculous plot unfolding with rapt and awe-filled attention was probably the best part of the show.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: As I said before, reasonably entertaining, but I'm hungry for an episode with some meat on its bones.

S3 E07: Sacred Ground

Okay, I'm going to try not to get too sarcastic in the synopsis.

*Deep Breath*

While the crew visits a temple on another world because they can't be bothered with going home, Kes is struck by a forcefield that she wanders into and almost dies. The monks at the temple won't let the crew bring instruments to scan the field and figure out how to make Kes better, but Neelix finds precedent in the culture's mythology for a family member of someone in Kes' predicament to beseech the monks to allow him or herself to go through a ritual, pass through the field, and beg the gods to cure the dying person. Instead of going with the obvious person (Neelix), Janeway has been busy setting herself up as the hubris-filled science strawman by being extra dismissive of the natives' beliefs, so she goes down to the planet instead. What follows is a string of cliche-driven sequences that "teach" Janeway that since science can't explain everything, she should just have faith, and that science is really faith too, so, in closing, faith is the best. The Doctor then starts explaining everything that happened to cure Kes, and Janeway, changed by her experiences, says "That's a very thorough, scientific explanation, thank you Doctor," then flashes her best condescending smile, and walks off.

When I was new to the internet, I used to read forum debates about things like science vs. religion for fun. For the first couple of pages, I'd see some interesting points, and then it would invariably devolve into a handful of people using more rhetoric than logic, dead set on changing their opponents' minds. I would never participate, because the futility of doing so was readily apparent, but I would seek these things out for years. So not only have I seen just about every piece of rhetorical flair out there, but, particularly relevant in this case, I have seen many, many misunderstandings of what science actually is.

When Janeway admits that though she can't yet explain what the field is, and she still believes that it is possible to explain it with more study, the spirits have this to say: "Even when her science fails right before her eyes she still has full confidence in it. Now that's a leap of faith" (in the smarmiest tones imaginable). To the scientist, the lack of ability to describe something in scientific terms is not a failure, it is just an unknown. An opportunity to know more. And maybe that is what the spirits are attempting to criticize. But to then have that "lesson" be the central point of the show, for Janeway to have "learned" to not be curious anymore, and have that be the happy ending? Of a Star Trek episode no less?!

Furthermore, the "leap of faith" that Janeway needs to take to rescue Kes, by doing what the spirits tell her and taking her physically into the field, isn't even really a leap of faith. A dilemma, for sure: but a risk/benefit analysis of the situation puts doing what the spirits say waaaay on top. Either (A) lose Kes for sure, or (B) take a chance that the spirits aren't trying to teach her a lesson by killing her (no benefit to them to do that) and have an opportunity to save Kes with negligible risk to herself. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

We really didn't need this kind of character assassination for Janeway either. I understand that the writers felt that without making Janeway act so intolerant at the beginning, they couldn't make her grow; but this isn't the growth she needs. It doesn't even really count as character growth if you just make the character worse for part of one episode so that you can "correct" it later in the episode. Up until now, Janeway's certainly taken a pretty agnostic view of things (see in particular Emanations); contrast with Picard's atheism or Sisko's whole "being the emissary of the Prophets"* thing, and I should be thrilled. After all, that's me. She's representing me on the world's stage - no she's representing me to the whole delta quadrant. And, when it counts, she turns out to just be a sock puppet, set up to show that science, learning, and intellectual inquiry is a kind of quaint endeavor; the real goal is to jump off a cliff when your gods tell you to.

The talent of Harry Groener (Tam Elbrun, Nathan Samuels, but most importantly, The Mayor) is completely wasted here. He plays the political leader of the Nechani, and he's just a useless politician the whole time. I guess there's some misdirection here; I kept expecting him to turn out to be devious, sociopathic, or at least a little complicated, but got nothing.

The minute or so that Torres has in the show at the beginning is good at least. She's decisive and authoritative, and continues to be well characterized, and it gets me thinking: how much more awesome would the show be with her as the captain? Sure, I don't always agree with her philosphically, but she's got enough insight to know her limits and not so overconfident that she wouldn't take the advice of others into account, while still being sufficiently pragmatic to not get sidetracked with worry and doubt. I think the writers are a lot less cautious with her and have seen a lot of success as a result.

Watchability: 0/5

Bottom Line: This episode was finely crafted to my exacting specifications for the worst episode of all time. Say what you will about TNG seasons 1 & 2 being bad; they were bad because they simply didn't know how to make a television show. The problems were mostly in pacing, dialogue, and characterization - or just flat out being uninteresting. Other than Up the Long Ladder (season 2, where we learn that it is okay to slaughter clones because cloning is evil), I can't think of any episode that I was nearly as disappointed by on a philosophical level. Voyager has dug itself a huge hole with this entry.

*Actually, for all of his being the mouthpiece of the gods to the Bajoran people, he plays the much more comfortable agnostic. Curious about Bajoran religion in an anthropological sense, respectful of the important role it has played in the survival of their species, yet still guarded when it comes to the unobservable.

S3 E06: Remember

The Enterprise Voyager takes on a group of friendly telepathic aliens (Enarans). While they're on board, Torres begins experiencing vivid dreams of another person's life on the Enaran homeworld. At first, they are highly erotic, but those dreams give way to the story of an ambitious woman, played by Torres, who finds herself to be a pawn in a plan to kill all the members of a social movement, at the behest of her father. Through a combination of fatherly lies, self-deception, and an unwillingness to believe that people she trusts would be so brutal, she plays her part, even sentencing her lover to death. Once awake, she confronts the Enarans, who deny everything, but one of the younger engineers consents to telepathically gaining the memories second hand from Torres, giving hope that the truth that the Enarans have denied about their past will someday come to light.

The first half of this episode is highly reminiscent of Violations (TNG, season 5), to the point where I was wondering why I was still watching. In fact (according to memory alpha), this episode started out as a discarded premise for a TNG episode, with Troi being the one to receive the memories. I actually like Torres a lot better as the recipient, because, as the writer put it, it was more effective to have a less "sensitive" character be affected by the revelations.

As an intentional holocaust allusion, I think this episode works well. In the sixties, psychologists set about to find out if Americans were fundamentally different from Germans; to see if it were possible that they'd allow themselves to commit murder when called upon to do so by authority figures. In particular, the Milgram experiment (familiar to anyone who has taken an intro psychology course ever) showed that it was not only possible, it was probable. This episode gives us a case study to illustrate the point, though even with knowledge of the study, sometimes the "protagonist" of the dreams doesn't seem to have sufficient motivation for following her course of action - I'm thinking in particular of the scene towards the end where she begins chanting along with the crowd after the public execution of her lover. Things seemed to move awfully quickly between covert mass killings to burning people alive in front of a throng of followers.

What really frustrates me about the episode isn't really that central to the plot: I am sick of the tired "luddites are better people" trope. The genocidees (screw you spell check, it's a word because I said so!) in this parable are persecuted because they don't like technology. It's especially bad in Insurrection, where the enlightened Ba'ku are the ones who live fulfilled lives because they got rid of technology, while their creepy, disgusting, murderous offspring, the Son'a, chose to embrace it, and gee shucks, look where it got them! Comparatively, it is just a footnote here, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I am extraordinarily thankful for the DS9 episode Paradise (season 2), wherein the luddites are actually huge jerks - the only counterexample I can think of in all of Trek. I touched on this a bit in my Jetrel review, where I was concerned that the episode would move in a "science is bad" direction, but I watch Trek (in part) because I believe that science and technology can be used as a tool in creating a better future. Technology is not good or evil, it is just an instrument that can be used for beneficial or nefarious ends. There are tons of shows you can watch to get the message that scientific advancement is bad. I want Trek to be the show that deviates from that path.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Good episode, frustrating elements. I feel like I keep saying variations on that for every bottom line. I want an episode that I can just call a good episode.

Side Note: This is the first episode I've seen for this project that I haven't seen ever before, or even had spoiled from reading synopses. That was nice.

Side Side Note: The lover is played by Charles Esten, otherwise known best as "Chip" on Whose Line Is It Anyways?, the show that eroded my Voyager watching habits in the pre-DVR days. Well, I guess I still don't have a DVR...

S3 E05: False Profits

Voyager encounters a world on the unstable end of a wormhole which has been bouncing around the delta quadrant. On this world, they find that a pair of Ferengi have been posing as gods for a pre-industrial society - Ferengi that were stranded in the delta quadrant in The Price (TNG, season 3). Initially, Janeway just beams them out, but Arridor convinces her that abducting the natives' "gods" would do irreparable harm, so she sets about finding a sneakier plan. The first plan is to disguise Neelix as the grand proxy of the Grand Nagus, but that fails. Plan two: learn the rest of the prophecy that foretold the arrival of the "sages," figure out how to abduct them while remaining true to the prophecy. That works, but now, instead of going back to the alpha quadrant through the wormhole (which they'd lured back to this planet), the Ferengi overcome their guard and disable Voyager with their shuttle, and bumble into the wormhole - which leaves again before Voyager can take it home.

The Ferengi were intended to be the next "big bad"* when they were introduced in TNG. Since they were pretty goofy and one-dimensional, they fell pretty flat in that role, and were relegated to simply being walking, ham-handed metaphors for how ugly greed is. They started out that way in DS9, but I feel they hit a turning point with Quark's fantastic speech to Sisko in The Jem'Hadar: "The way I see it, hew-mons used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget. ...But you're overlooking something: Hew-mons used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi. Slavery. Concentration camps. Interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you. We're better. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lock to pick." From that point forward, the Ferengi were used as a much more likable comic-relief troop. And that was the goal for their use here.

The "moral dilemma" as to whether or not the crew should try to intervene in the Ferengi's meddling is glossed over quickly, which is good because I can't think of any situation in which a Federation captain has hesitated before stopping a third party from breaking the prime directive. I don't quite get the reasoning for needing to send the Ferengi back and trying to remove the Ferengi in a less intrusive way. Certainly, Picard would have just beamed down and told the inhabitants that the Ferengi weren't their gods, and, by the way, all religion is a lie. Maybe that's not the best way to do it either, but there's got to be some middle ground, right? The way Voyager goes about it, they actually seem to legitimize the Ferengi's regime on the planet by making their departure fit with the prophecies. I'd rather that they just showed up with a bunch of phaser rifles, in plain view of the natives, and stormed off with the Ferengi without saying a word, at least leaving some doubt that they were actually the sages in the minds of the people there. Of course, if they did that, we wouldn't have an episode.

Neelix makes an entertaining Ferengi, but of course, he has portrayed one before. I don't have much else to say about that.

It also seems like a cheap ending to just have Ferengi Meddling^TM ruin Voyager's chances to get home. The Voyager crew is constantly being outsmarted by everyone they meet, and for me it is starting to add up - especially when it is done by two people who were being portrayed as the epitomes of incompetence for the entire rest of the episode. The director, Cliff Bole, was pretty apologetic for this episode, claiming that the reason why it wasn't terribly good is that it was "too silly." I disagree. Silly is fine. But this episode is just meaningless - a contrived conflict, and a chance to get home foiled by bumbling.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: People are often very quick to generalize and say that there's an overarching rule that caused an episode (or series) to not be very good. Silly isn't bad, even a meaningless episode isn't necessarily bad, but a combination of those factors with one-dimensional villains and generally uncreative dialogue produced a pretty boring result.

*Now I've lost another perfectly good hour to tvtropes.