S4 E24: Demon

Voyager is running out of deuterium, and is forced to look to a class-Y (classy!), completely inhospitable planet. When they are unable to beam the underground deuterium directly to the ship, Kim volunteers himself (and Paris) for a shuttle mission to the surface. They find deuterium quickly, but contact with a silver pool breaches their suits and they are unable to return to the shuttle before their air expires. With options running out, Voyager lands, and Chakotay and Seven go out in search of the two; only to find them walking around without environmental suits on, breathing the air without difficulty. But when they are beamed back aboard the ship, they can no longer breath the ship's atmosphere. The Doctor discovers that they've been altered by the pool, as if the planet were terraforming them, but he can't undo the changes (even though he can reintegrate Klingon DNA into a Human and reverse millenia of "evolutionary" changes). Working on a sample of the silver stuff, Torres discovers that it can duplicate matter; shortly thereafter Chakotay, Seven and Kim prime find the original Kim and Paris bodies, barely alive from the backup systems of their suits. A silver pool begins to consume Voyager; through negotiations with Kim prime, Janeway discovers that the silver liquid is a lifeform, but had never achieved sentience until it copied Kim and Paris. In exchange for being released by the pool, Janeway offers samples of the DNA of any crew who volunteer, in order to give new life to the silver liquid.

The friendship between Kim and Paris has dwindled over the last season, but it is back in force here. The two are a good team, and can serve as a good foundation whenever the writers are looking to have Paris do rebellious stuff (though, in those instances, they always seem to forget that Paris could turn to Kim in those situations). There's a lot of friendly banter between the two, and I'm glad to see it. In fact, there's good banter in this episode in general; I guess it takes giving the writing reigns to the science consultant to bring the good casual dialogue. Okay, that's not completely fair, but I do like for episodes to all have some dialogue that is not directly related to the overall plot, and that doesn't happen a lot on Voyager. It isn't necessary to the plot to resurface the Kim/Paris friendship, but they do it anyways. Good on them.

I touched on this in the summary, but it is hard to take it seriously when the Doctor can't find the solution to a medical problem. Given the kinds of things he has fixed in the past, I just roll my eyes when there's something he flat out says cannot be done.

Early in the episode, there is a subplot where energy is being conserved by shutting off life-support to crew quarters and moving everyone into small areas, which is good thinking. Neelix gets a bit annoying and starts acting entitled, demanding to be allowed to sleep in sickbay since, hey, no one's using the beds. Given the number of homeless people who come into the ER after being kicked out of the shelter because they couldn't follow the rules and were drunk or high, and say that they're "suicidal" just to get a bed for the rest of the night, that irked me a bit, especially after Chaktay sides with Neelix over the Doctor. The Doctor sets about making their lives miserable with his loud singing and clanking about with equipment, and Neelix ups the ante by singing back and the Doctor backs down. But when it is time to bring Kim and Paris prime to sickbay, Neelix is true to his word and leaves as soon as the beds are needed by someone who is actually sick, even before it is revealed how sick they really are, showing the maturity that he has really only had for the last season.

The silver liquid story felt pretty generic until the addition of the sentience angle. I like that the goo can only be as complicated as the most functional thing that it has copied, and I imagine achieving sentience overnight must be an overwhelming experience. Especially when you consider that it can also copy the memories, so it has the processing capability, and the files to dig through, but a subtly different perspective. I'm surprised that Janeway was willing to play God and give the goo more DNA (and not cite it as a prime directive violation), but I'm glad she was.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: While Voyager's science consultant can write some decent episodes, and this one is his best yet, he continues his streak of writing episodes that are completely devoid of any believable science.