S5 E26: Equinox, Part I

A Federation ship, the USS Equinox, is under attack, with fissures opening up all over the ship, and horrifying creatures emerging from them and mutilating the crew. Voyager responds to their distress signal and extends its shields around the Equinox, giving them some respite from their plight. The two crews work together on a solution to these attacks, but it soon becomes clear that the Equinox crew is hiding something. The Doctor beams to their science lab, and discovers that they have been using these creatures as fuel, and Janeway has all members of the Equinox crew confined to quarters. However, the Equinox EMH is activated, and since his ethical subroutines have been deleted, he traps our Doctor on his ship and returns to Voyager, freeing his crew. They steal the the new shield generator that the crews had been working on, leaving Voyager behind to fend for themselves against the invaders.

So this is it, the Pegasus of Star Trek Voyager. Sure, there are other meetings of starship captains, out of reach of other authorities, with a clash over what they believe to be the right course of action throughout the vast history of televised science fiction - but I can't think of a single one with as many distinct parallels as these two. Here, these crews are completely separated from home, either by decades of travel or by the simple fact that their home no longer exists. These captains (and admiral) have gone years without anyone that they have to answer to, but now they are face to face with someone who has the authority to judge them.

And that's what Equinox is about: judgment. I don't think anyone could begin to justify the actions of Cain and her crew, but discipline in Adama's colonial fleet certainly kept him planted firmly in a glass house. The treatment of Valerii forced him to throw a stone, but it wasn't something he was in a rush to do. And while I do not in any way condone the actions of Cain or her crew, their motivation, revenge for the attempted genocide of the human species, makes their fall from grace believable. Captain Ransom and his crew, on the other hand, are murdering creatures just to get home faster. It's a hard pill to swallow after five years of watching Voyager traverse the delta quadrant in relative comfort, even with the writers' efforts to explain how tough conditions were on the Equinox through the various stories from its crew. When Ransom does spill the beans about the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" way in which his crew came to be the murderers that they are, that softens the blow somewhat.

Still, I would have liked this much more if they'd gone with something at least a little more morally ambiguous. That would have given this episode more of an opportunity to have a battle of egos between him and Janeway, considering that her record isn't exactly clean (see Counterpoint for a Janeway dismissal of the prime directive as more of a guideline, really). But with the disparity of crimes being so great, Janeway is ready to go right for the throat from the second she hears of this breach of protocol. Additionally, making the outsider (Cain) the ranking officer opened up so many more dramatic options. As it is, even if Ransom wanted to mount a verbal defense against Janeway's attacks, he didn't have the evidence (and I couldn't pass my 150+ pages of evidence through the TV screen, unfortunately). I would have loved to have seen some dismay on Ransom's face when he discovered that half her crew had been members of the Maquis, but it is only mentioned in passing by his first officer.

But, if I had watched this when it first aired, I wouldn't have seen Pegasus yet. It is still a momentous event for Voyager to meet up with its first other Starfleet vessel in five years. We, the viewers, know things have to go wrong, but it is just nice to see some other people in those uniforms again. Especially considering Voyagers poor track record for making friends (I can count the ones from the 26 episodes of this season on one hand), I was happy to see some automatic friends show up, even knowing that the feeling would be fleeting. It's great to see the first officer, Burke, as an old friend of Torres', a familiar face in a far away land.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: When it comes down to it, there's a lot in Voyager that comes away dimmer when compared to its parallel in Battlestar Galactica. But despite the unfavorable comparison, this episode is still an important milestone in Voyager.

S5 E25: Warhead

Kim, who has been taking the night shift in order to get command experience, sends Voyager off to respond to a distress signal. On the planet, he and the Doctor find some sort of device, buried in a rock, and capable of communicating only with the Doctor through some sort of machine code. It is heavily damaged, but seems to be intelligent but unaware that it is a machine. The Doctor advocates helping it, and Kim, despite feeling cautious about the whole thing, agrees. The device is found to have an explosive payload, so Kim, the Doctor, and Torres (after a spirited briefing room debate) attempt to interface it with the holoemitters in sickbay, trying to separate the intelligence from the bomb. The bomb discovers what is going on and routes itself into the Doctor's program, taking over some ship functions along the way. He demands for Voyager to take him to his destination, which Janeway accedes to. In the meantime, while Janeway is following up on a dead-end lead that Neelix came up with, Kim begins trying to talk the bomb out of exploding. He helps him recover some of his lost memory, which includes instructions from home to abort the mission. At first the bomb is resistant to Kim's approach, but when a fleet of like-minded missiles surrounds Voyager, he comes around just in time to blow up all the other missiles and save billions of lives in the process.

The "artificial intelligence is continuing a war that its creators have stopped" theme is picked up again from Prototype. But instead of being a rehash of that previous episode (like Bliss was for Persistence of Vision), Warhead takes the idea of the story and explores it further. In Prototype, Voyager was in no position to try to reason with the androids; their options were (a) prevent them from procreating and run away or (b) be swept away by their superior firepower and die. I don't fault them for picking option 'a'. But because of the particulars of this story, we get to see an attempt to solve the problem.

It's a bit weird that a bomb would be given such and advanced, emotional AI, but once you get past that conceit, the episode flows just fine. Since the AI is so advanced to start out with, I don't have any problem with the effectiveness of Kim's negotiations. I find it reasonably natural that placing this intelligence into a social situation would affect it in strange ways. The development arc for the bomb is good, though the flip is a bit sudden, and the noble turn at the end is powerful.

We get a little bit of rare Voyager banter here, between Kim and ensign-we'll-never-see-you again, which is a kind of a waste. These little moments were what DS9 was so good at, things that gave us little bits of not simply character growth but also relationship growth. Fortunately, his bridge scene is followed up by a short scene with him and Paris in the hall which delivers some of the friendship which faded in the middle of the series but has started to reemerge this season. Unfortunately, the Paris-as-an-ensign-too-now dynamic is not really explored, something that would play right into this episode's Kim-still-harbors-ambitions-despite-being-an-ensign-for-five-years theme.

Also disappointing is the lack of interplay between Torres and Kim, considering that they were stuck in sickbay for more than half the episode. The two share some lines, but there's no hint of the grudging friendship that they established in Caretaker, but then petered out over the next couple of seasons. Their friendship was something I was very happy with in early Voyager, the best bridging between the two crews in the entire main cast, and I am consistently let down when it fails to resurface.

We do get some good (and rare) interaction between the Doctor and Kim. Kim has ambition, which drives him to act confidently without real confidence to back it up. The Doctor, on the other hand, is brimming with confidence, which fosters an ambition that just feels like a side-effect of the confidence. In addition, the Doctor and Kim get to play opposite sides of the "advocating for the artificial life-form" debate, only to have the tables turned when the Doctor is overwritten by the bomb. It's all natural and effective.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: I know, from the review it looked like I just whined about relationships throughout the whole thing, but the AI a-plot and the Kim's enthusiasm/ambition b-plots were both very engaging and strongly worth a watch.

S5 E24: Relativity

We flash back to Voyager in dry dock at Utopia Planetia, and Janeway is touring this ship with an Admiral, but what's this? Seven's on the ship, in a blue Starfleet uniform, without her implants. She finds a bomb implanted in a jeffries tube, but cannot remove it - she is discovered by internal sensors, and future Starfleet pulls her back to the futureTM, which kills her. Jumping back to the present, a temporal bomb (I almost wrote time bomb, but I guess that has another meaning) is detonating on Voyager, and more future Starfleet personnel abduct another Seven just before the bomb goes off. This is actually the third Seven they've abducted, and they need her help finding the saboteur - she is particularly useful since her implants make her the only one capable of seeing the bomb. Each trip through time increases the risk of debilitating temporal narcosis, so they've been trying to pinpoint the exact time that the temporal bomb was placed (it seems that the only way to remove it is to prevent its placement). The next best guess is that it occurred during a period of heavy Kazon attacks, so Seven goes back to that time. This time, she finds that the bomb is no longer there, so she stands ready to engage the saboteur, but this time Janeway recalls the internal sensor readings from dry dock, and captures Seven. Making a quick decision, Seven lets Janeway in on what's going on, and they capture the culprit: none other than the future version of the leader of the people trying to stop himself, Captain Braxton, the same guy who was in Future's End. He leads Seven on a chase through time, eventually causing her to get temporal narcosis, but present-Seven eventually captures him for real. In order to fix the timeline for real though, captured-future-Braxton reveals the moment that he appeared on Voyager, so that present-Janeway can stop him before it becomes necessary to do all these other temporal incursions.

That was one of my longer recaps in a while because this episode is convoluted. It is as if the writers wanted to see what the maximum possible number of inconsistencies they could cram into one episode was. Well, a time travel story is a good choice for that kind of challenge: Star Trek in general doesn't always handle time-travel's effects the same way, but just think what you could do if you put all those different ways into one episode, and then made up some new ways. It got to be such a fun experiment that I ended up having a lot of fun with this episode, so I'll tell you now that it gets a 4/5. I'm saying that now, because I want you to know that before I go through each of the inconsistencies one by one - while I noticed these, and I'm sure I missed some, I still had a good time.

1. The goal of this bomb is to erase Voyager from the timeline. If it detonates, as we see happen at one point in the episode, Voyager should be gone at any point that the future guys time travel to. This clearly doesn't happen, and Voyager only blows up at one point in time, so whoever sold that bomb to Braxton ripped him off.

2. Speaking of Braxton, who, even if you saw Future's End, you wouldn't recognize because he's being played by a new guy, his motivations don't make sense. He mentions being angry at Voyager for getting stuck on 20th century Earth, but Voyager undid that! At the end of part 2 he shows up all fixed and happily takes them back to where they were.

3. So the bomb, since it can be seen before it was placed, is clearly made out of the same anti-time stuff that we heard about in All Good Things.... However, for some reason, even though Seven can see it in dry dock, years before it gets placed, she can't see it mere minutes before it gets placed during the Kazon attack.

4. Catching multiple Sevens: this idea actually lends credence to the theory of Trek time travel that I put forth in the Timeless review - under the combination of time-travel with a multiple parallel universe situation, I suppose you could keep going back to pick up new Sevens without causing paradoxes by leaving no Sevens around for your past selves to get.

5. Here's what makes #4 an inconsistency: it doesn't mesh at all with the whole solution of sending Janeway back to "fix" the timeline by catching Braxton earlier. This is probably the most headache-causing part of the episode, and I don't even feel like it was very necessary. As we've already seen from this episode, there are absolutely no adverse consequences whatsoever for causing temporal paradoxes in this episode's universe, so why fix it?

6. Speaking of the futility of fixing time, why police it if it doesn't matter? Why have temporal prime-directives if you can go back in time and erase your grandparents and it doesn't change anything? Just having them around causes a problem I have with Future's End: where were they all those other times when time was getting mangled in other series, only worse?

Anyways, I know there are more than six, but I have seriously lost my train of thought. Six will have to do.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: While I would always prefer a mind-bender that is mentally-challenging because it is genuinely written more intelligently than I can wrap my head around, this one provided reasonable amounts of entertainment.

S5 E23: 11:59

Neelix's sudden interest in Earth history causes Janeway to reflect on an ancestor of hers who she has always looked up to. We then follow the actions for this Shannon O'Donnell (played by Kate Mulgrew, to my dismay), who Janeway believes was an astronaut who wen t to Mars and pioneered a self-contained, visible from space, futuristic structure called the Millennium Gate. In fact, she was a washed up engineer who never made it to space, and by chance wound up in the bookstore of a Henry Janeway, the only shop owner in Portage Creek Indiana who won't sell his store to make way for the future. Shannon is approached by one of the Gate's big-wigs, who offers her a job if she'll convince Henry to sell. She talks to him about it, and is up front about the offer, but he, in true Janeway form, is rude and snarky back. She prepares to leave the city, but finds she loves Henry too much, and returns, and everyone lives happily ever after with the Millennium Gate. Janeway is at first disappointed when she discovers the truth about her ancestor hidden in some Ferengi database that they happen to have in the delta quadrant, but the crew reminds her that while her history may be a lie, the fact that it inspired present-Janeway to be a Starfleet officer is real enough.

I think I've been using the words "trite" and "cliched" too much, and I've never liked the word hackneyed much (just personal preference, really), so I headed over to Thesaurus.com to find some alternatives. Stale. Uninspired. Tired. Banal. These are all great words for describing this episode. At least, unlike yesterday's Someone to Watch Over Me, this installment isn't offensive. I suppose that maybe if you are still a resident of your mother's womb you have not already been exposed to thirty variations on the "traditional guy won't sell/move to make way for the future" story, but I think it is becoming standard procedure at this point to play some related audiobooks with headphones firmly planted on a pregnant woman's distended abdomen.

That's not to say that there's no merit in telling a story again. Progress, a DS9 episode, found a new twist on it, created a compelling relationship between Kira and Mullibok, and used the story to explore Bajoran culture (which is highly relevant to the overall DS9 story). This episode instead reveals nothing new about Janeway's character, focuses on characters we'll never hear about again, and couches itself in a love story for two personalities which, in my most humble opinion, have absolutely zero chemistry with each other. But, again, it isn't unwatchable, it's just boring.

My second complaint, that a 20th century drama really isn't what I signed up to watch, is less bothersome, but still annoying. Just as there are a hojillion shows about standing in the way of progress out of respect for the past, there are, as it turns out, a hojillion shows set in the 20th century. If I wanted to watch one of those shows, I would be. I'm not because, personally, if your work is not science fiction or fantasy, I generally feel like you're just not trying hard enough. I thirst for the creativity and world-building of pieces that fall into those categories - though, to be fair, the last three books I've read for fun (and greatly enjoyed for one reason or another) have not been sci-fi, or even fictional. This episode has none of that.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: Inoffensive, but extremely boring. I think that the only reason that I'm not giving this episode a one out of five is that it is still an improvement over Someone to Watch Over Me.

S5 E22: Someone to Watch Over Me

A Plot: Seven is caught spying on Torres and Paris to further her understanding of romance, so the Doctor steps in to teach her what he knows about it. He and Paris bet about the outcome of her dating experiments, and when Seven's first date with a random crew member goes awry, the Doctor steps in to be her date for the wager's culmination, since he realizes that he has developed feelings for her. Paris spills the beans about the bet, Seven is angry, and the Doctor's heart is broken. B Plot: Neelix is tasked with playing ambassador to a member of a culturally conservative race while Janeway and Tuvok are on the surface of their planet. The Kadi ambassador develops quite a taste for the excesses that he can find on Voyager, much to Neelix's mortification. He doesn't have the enzyme needed to brush off his inebriation from synthahol, so the Doctor cures his intoxication using nanoprobes. He is in better shape by the time of the return of his leader from the planet's surface, who surprises everyone by expressing disappointment that he didn't take this opportunity to imbibe.

I think I've made my feelings on awkward situations (Non Sequitur), hearing a Trek-writer's-eye-view on love (Lifesigns), and insipid Trek love stories in general (Unforgettable) pretty clear. This episode manages to stitch together all of those elements in one wretched abomination. Almost every scene with Seven in it was so excruciatingly awkward that I could barely keep my eyes on the screen, even with the knowledge that, as a solid bottom five episode, I would have to write a review for it that would be forever linked to from the main page.

It started with the eye-rolling. The Doctor's explanations about love were only slightly more tolerable than Kes' from Lifesigns, largely because he's expected to be a non-expert. I usually like the blind-leading-the-blind elements of Doctor-Seven and Tuvok-Seven interactions, because the Doctor is usually so misguided himself and because Tuvok is so disdainful of human frivolities. The problem here is that it was obvious that his flimsy understandings of love were just a set-up for awkward situations, so you know that every little thing he tells her is going to cause trouble later.

The date with that guy we'll never see again was agonizing, but it was nothing compared to the Doctor-Seven date and associated ruining due to the reveal of the wager. It isn't even clever. The bet is something that has been done ad nauseum in a hojillion different romantic comedies or teen dramas or the margins of a high-schooler's notepad. It's one thing for Voyager to include romance or love stories, but it is another for it to do so in such a painfully trite way. Even though these stories aren't for me, I'd be willing to give them some credit if they at least showed enough creativity that I wouldn't have to look at it under a microscope to see it.

Neelix's subplot, while also awkward, is inoffensive, and almost seems like a masterpiece in comparison with the A-plot. Neelix continues to be relatively competent, and no longer has a grain of the pettiness he showed in the first two seasons, so there's that. It was good that some part of this episode defied expectations by having the planet's leader come back and not be worried about his comrade's indulgences. In general, the B-plot reminds me a lot of the guys from Liasons. Nothing much to add to that, it just felt very familiar.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: Neelix saved this episode from being the second zero out of five.

S5 E21: Juggernaut

A Malon ship has experienced a disaster, flooding it with deadly theta radiation and forcing its crew to evacuate. Voyager recovers the only two survivors, who warn them to get away before the ship explodes and destroys everything in a two light year radius. However, the theta radiation is destabilizing subspace, so Voyager cannot go to warp, and Voyager's crew must disable the freighter or be destroyed. Chakotay, Neelix, Torres, and the Malons (great band name!) board the ship, but Chakotay is injured, leaving the volatile Torres in charge - who was reprimanded at the beginning of the episode for destroying the Doctor's holo-imager when he was bothering her with it by taking pictures of the warp core. The team runs into trouble in the form of a disfigured, irradiated monster formed from one of the abandoned Malon crew; he is a "core worker," someone who is hired for the purpose of working in the most dangerous areas of the ship at a rate that is equal to what most Malons make in a lifetime - but they only have a 30% chance of surviving a two-month journey. Torres, after trying to negotiate with him, is forced to fight him in order to save her team before Voyager tows the ship into a sun.

Torres starts out extra-grating in this episode, continuing the not-so-proud Voyager tradition of taking steps backwards with a character in order to give them some development in the course of the episode. She does get a rare scene with Tuvok, possibly the first one of any substance since season two's Twisted, and despite Tuvok's meaningless aphorisms, I'm still happy to see the two bounce off each other some more. And though it is annoying for Torres to need to make some negative progress in this episode, her subplot manages to tie into the story well enough without being a too-perfect fit. I'm glad that she doesn't manage to negotiate with the monster, it was enough for her to try (though it is clear that it bothered her that she failed from her final scene).

So, Malons. I know what I expected to think: why would they bring these failures back again? Surprisingly I was quite impressed by their use here. Great efforts were made to make them less two dimensional - the writers took a closer look at their social structure, their motivations, and their lives than they do for most other species. The lead Malon, Fesek, is a family man, who has taken this dangerous job to support his family. His comrade, Pelk, has made a model of a Malon ship for Fesek's son to play with, assuming they get home in time for his son's birthday. Together they give a more noble side to a villain you'd expect to see in a Captain Planet episode, while still managing to maintain their shortsightedness. I love the idea of the "core workers," desperate enough to take a hopeless job just to provide for their loved ones. They are a perfect way to humanize a bad guy without taking away the elements that make them someone for the protagonists to work against.

The big problem is: Voyager solved the Malon's garbage-dumping problem in the very first episode in which we meet them (Night). Because they just needed to cause conflict there, they ignored it in order to make the episode longer. But these Malons here, they're fairly reasonable people. Especially after the revelation that the monster is a core worker, that they are turning their people into their own enemy (similar monsters on other Malon ships were considered to be something of an urban legend), I really wanted Janeway to re-offer the solution to Fesek. According to memory-alpha, we never see the Malons again, and that would have been the perfect opportunity to say why.

Still, I am impressed with the writers. Thus far, it has been more their style to just give up on concepts that they cannot make work (See: Kes), but here they show a rare form of bravery in their attempt to rework them into something worthwhile. I saw Nick Sagan's name in the writing credits, son of the more famous Carl Sagan; I knew he was coming to the Voyager writing staff at some point after trying to search for patterns in episode quality based on who the writers were for each episode (I'll probably post my findings once I'm done with the series). However, I didn't know when he was coming, and when I saw his name here I was all excited to proclaim him to be the factor that saved the Malons. And then I saw that I simply had not been observant, and his name was on several other episodes from this season: In the Flesh 2/5, Gravity 2/5, and Course: Oblivion 1/5. Well, instead I guess I'll just congratulate him on contributing to a good episode finally, and look forward to his last installment, Relativity, with some trepidation.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: The treatment of the Malons here is nothing short of a triumph, but it is held down by a middling Torres plot and by Malon elements in previous episodes.

S5 E20: Think Tank

A group of diverse aliens that specialize in problem solving approach Voyager, offering assistance with their newest quandry: a species of bounty hunter aliens who are attempting to corner and capture the ship. However, when it turns out that part of what they want in recompense is Seven, the deal is off. Voyager captures a pair of the bounty hunters and discovers that they had been hired initially by this "think tank" under false pretenses as part of an attempt to acquire Seven one way or the other. Voyager's crew and their pursuers set up a counter trap, since the think tank ship would be worth a much higher bounty than Voyager itself: convince the think tank that Voyager is in such danger that Seven is going to their ship as a last-ditch effort to save them, then disable their cloaking effect (drop their ship out of subspace, I guess it isn't really a cloak though it effectively does the same thing) when she is linked to their telepathic relays. The plan works perfectly, and Voyager runs off while the think tank ship is under attack from the bounty hunters.

I really like the idea of the think tank crew as an entity within the Trek universe. I get kind of a Doctor Whoish feel to them, though that series is admittedly the major televised science fiction cannon of which I have the least knowledge (just the first season and a half of the latest incarnation, which my wife and I have been enjoying greatly). A non-Federation group of civilian problem solvers could support, if not a whole series, perhaps a Trek-related miniseries. It would give a good opportunity to have an ideologically diverse cast without significantly altering the charter of the Federation - cultural interference could be discussed without the dogma of the prime directive stifling intellectual debate the way it has in Voyager. Speaking of civilian, there aren't a whole lot of non-military science fiction shows out there. While Starfleet is hardly as rigid as an actual military organization, it is certainly better funded than Mal's firefly-class Serenity was. That's part of where my affinity for Firefly and what little I've seen of Doctor Who comes from, and the "big picture" effect of Battlestar Galactica's depiction of an entire fictional society from top to bottom, military and civilian, the politically powerful and the oppressed is fantastic.

Getting back to this episode, the invention of the think tank group is creative, and gives us a good story, even if it is quite a predictable story. It is very clear from the beginning that Kurros (the leader of the think tank) is playing both sides to maximize the chance that he'll end up with what he wants (Seven), especially after the teaser (wherein he insists on receiving a payment from a planet that will leave it unable to feed its population) showing how unscrupulous he and his team are. Thankfully, Janeway has been getting better at displaying at least a hint of caution when dealing with people she doesn't know - and, to be fair, has been better at it for multiple seasons now - so it is a bit more believable that she is initially caught unaware of the deception.

Voyager's plan is a good one, and a clever one, but the script's interpretation of it is a bit ridiculous. In order to beat the think tank at their own game, Janeway is convinced that they should try something other than out-thinking them. Well, okay, but what could that possibly mean? What other option is there besides out thinking them, overpowering them? The solution is sold to the audience as a means of cheating the think tank, but in what way could that possibly count as not out-thinking them? I wouldn't belabor this point, but the episode sure did so it has annoyed me into action. Still, it is relatively minor in the grand scope of "things I could be annoyed by in a Voyager episode," and the episode remains interesting and fun, so I'll mostly give it a pass.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: I like the idea of the think tank crew thus I like the idea of this episode.

S5 E19: The Fight

Voyager is trapped in "chaotic space," which warps and twist reality and breaks the laws of physics. Aliens who are native to this space are trying to contact Chakotay telepathically by activating a gene that causes alzheimer's/dementia-like symptoms. Chakotay resists, since it awakens his fear of living out his life the way his grandfather did, who also had this gene. When he finally comes to terms with his fear, through visions influenced by his boxing hobby, he becomes a conduit through which the aliens can communicate, and he pilots the ship out of the region.

One of the more pervasive minor themes in Voyager is that of a fear of alzheimer's disease and dementia. There have been a number of episodes that have explored this theme, and for good reason. Given the number of elderly patients I see in the ER, people who their families remember as vibrant and resilient people, who now no longer know who they are, where they are, or who these people are around them, I fear it a whole hell of a lot. If I could name one disease process to get immunity to, out of the whole of spectrum of human ailment, it would be this one. Not because I myself would suffer that much, but because I would cause so much pain to those I love without even knowing it.

Anyways, so this episode has a good catch. But mostly it is used to have a bunch of trippy "things are soooo crazy in Chakotay's head!" scenes, like they wanted to do an extremely surreal episode along the lines of Frame of Mind. But while Frame of Mind had a mystery element to it (i.e. "wtf is going on?"), this episode spills the beans right away. Within the first few minutes we know that aliens are trying to contact Chakotay but he is too scared of the associated dementia. It would have been nice if any of the boxing or dementia themes had been introduced for Chakotay before - his interest in boxing has never come up before, and seems to clash with his otherwise pacifist sensibilities.

Like Bliss, I think this too could have been a good Tuvok vehicle. However, unlike Bliss, I think it would have made it an altogether better episode, as it would have added an element of order versus chaos. A Vulcan's mind represents a constant battle of order (logic) overcoming chaos (emotion). Being in chaotic space, with aliens who introduce chaotic thought in order to communicate, it would have added a little something extra to have the afflicted crew member be a Vulcan, someone who prizes that order so highly. It would have been easy to add the grandfather with dementia to Tuvok's backstory - in fact, there already exists a Vulcan malady in cannon, Bendii Syndrome, which Sarek suffered from.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: This episode comes from a good place, but feels poorly fleshed out and ultimately feels like a somewhat flimsy excuse to have surreal scenes that don't make much sense.

S5 E18: Course: Oblivion

We begin with Paris and Torres' wedding ceremony, but things quickly go awry when Torres begins to demolecularize, and dies. Chakotay and Tuvok determine that it wasn't actually Torres though, she was a copy of Torres from the episode Demon. In fact, they discover that the whole ship and crew are copies, as everything and everyone begins to break down due to effects from the warp core. At first they opt to continue towards Earth, until it becomes clear that they have to return to the Class-Y (classy!) planet of their origin. They fail, they all die, and all evidence that they existed is destroyed just before they come into contact with the real Voyager.

The first clue that we get that things aren't right is that Paris' rank is established as still being lieutenant during the wedding. Of course, given Voyager's continuity track record, that's not much of a hint. I would more readily assume that the writers just forgot, or this episode was aired out of order, or the re-promotion was just supposed to be assumed to have happened off-screen. The other clue is that everyone is happy and close to getting home due to an advancement with the warp drive, which we also know can't be the case this season.

Anyways, this episode is a follow-up for a good season four episode, Demon. As one of the characters lampshades annoyingly here, yes, I did harbor some curiosity about what had happened to those copies of the crew. And while the whole "forgetting we were copies" thing is hand-waved away, the copies in that episode didn't know they were copies either. But one thing they did have was an overwhelming desire to stay on the planet at all costs, which isn't addressed at all. There's also the issue with being unable to breathe in M-class environments, which would have broken the illusion earlier any time they tried to beam down to a planet.

However, those are just nitpicks compared to the much larger problem with this episode: it is completely pointless. Nothing happens, all character development is erased, and the crew never even gets to pass on their logs to anyone. All effort for the entire length of the show is meaningless. It would be one thing to have an episode about futility, but to do so with a crew that we'll never meet again is just a complete waste of time.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: Don't bother.

S5 E17: The Disease

Kim has sex with a woman (Tal) from "generational starship," but he feels guilty because it is apparently now against Starfleet protocol to sleep with the natives. Voyager has been working with the crew of this ship, but earning their trust has been difficult since their culture is largely xenophobic. When Kim's indiscretion is revealed through his skin luminescing (maybe he's pregnant?) Janeway is enraged. Kim is contrite at first, but can't stay away because sex with a Varro sets off a biochemical bonding reaction. When the leader of the Varro catches wind of this tryst, he is outraged because Tal is a member of the dissident movement who wants to break away from the ship, and he assumes that Kim is also involved in an attempt to break it into its component ships. While Kim and Janeway are arguing about love, the sabotage is enacted, and then there are no more problems with the Varro.

Well, if you didn't learn that sex is bad from Buffy causing Angel to turn evil with vile premarital intercourse, I suppose you could have learned that here. Anyways, if Starfleet has any sort of protocol about having sex with the aliens you meet, it was put in place right before Voyager shipped out, and was rescinded within seconds of Voyager's trip to the delta quadrant. I couldn't decide if all the lines about such a protocol with tongue in cheek or if the writers had simply never seen Shatner do his thing. I mean, it's okay to show the crew not sleeping with their first contacts, but to pretend that it is unprecedented is weird.

In any event, this episode feels like an after school special. As a result, the fairly interesting generational ship is, at best, glossed over. I would have liked to spend some more time on the ship, or at least meet more than three people from it. It isn't even clear what Voyager is getting out of this alliance with the Varro: "We don't trust you!" "We'll help you! Do you trust us now?" "Well, not yet. Maybe you could help us out some more?" "Absoultely! do you trust us now?" This is a love story first, and as a result, as usual, its rating will suffer.

There is one thing though that pulled this episode out of a complete nose-dive: Janeway kind of obliquely admits that she was maybe being a too much of a jerk about Kim having sex. She doesn't regret being overbearing, just regrets being too overbearing. But this is huge progress. The only other time I can think of anything like this happening is earlier this season, in Latent Image. I hope that this is a sign of a change in the direction of her character.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: Well, okay, this episode didn't quite pull itself out of the nose-dive, but it at least managed to avoid any populated areas when it crashed and burned.

S5 E15/16: Dark Frontier

A Borg scout vessel bears down on Voyager, but is destroyed when Kim beams a torpedo directly aboard their ship before they raise shields. The goal, however, was just to incapacitate it; Voyager quickly moves on to another Borg target, a damaged sphere, intent on seizing its transwarp drive. After running drills, Seven is contacted by the Borg queen, who informs her that she is aware of Voyager's plans and will spare them if Seven willingly rejoins the collective. Janeway is having second thoughts about bringing Seven along, but Seven, displaying her unfamiliarity with all recorded human fictional media since the beginning of time, decides that the best course of action is to keep the communication a secret while also adamantly insisting on going on the larceny spree. Well, the mission is a success, except that Seven breaks Janeway's poor little heart by abandoning the crew to rejoin the Borg. Certain that there is no way that Seven could possibly not adore her with every fiber of her being, Janeway begins searching for transmissions from the Borg, which she finds, and initiates a plan to rescue Seven with the Delta Flyer. She takes a couple other people with her, but there's really no reason to because she just does everything herself. The queen and Janeway engage in a pissing match over who is more deserving of Seven's devotion (despite like three scenes in which Seven persistently displays no desire to return to the Borg), and then they escape. They are followed, but Voyager collapses the transwarp conduit, destroying the pursuing ships. Voyager then shaves fifteen years off the trip home using the drive, and then the drive doesn't work anymore, I guess.

Even though this was originally aired as a two hour episode, it really feels like a two parter, and not in a good way. The first half of the episode is waaaay too long, as if the writers were trying to drag it out to have the reveal of the Borg queen's existence at the halfway point as a cliffhanger spot for reruns. A large chunk of time is dedicated to rehearsing the heist, a trope common to heist films, except there is absolutely no energy in that scene. The viewer is supposed to think that it is the real attempt, but we've all seen a movie before (and Janeway already said that they were going to have to run some simulations), and I was just thinking "man, I wish this were the real thing, because then I wouldn't have to watch it all over again."

Now, in the DS9 episode (Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang) which follows the same trope, they go over the plan just so that we can see what was supposed to happen, in contrast to the actual attempt in which things (everything) go wrong and the characters must cope. But in Dark Frontier, we just see the same sequence all over again (though slightly, blessedly sped up), with the one small hiccup where Seven abandons the crew.

I've read and/or heard responses to the Borg queen's appearance in Voyager being a surprise, given that we saw her die in First Contact. However, that very same movie established that she was already killed once in Best of Both Worlds, Part II, so, for me at least, there was no surprise at all in her reveal - just disappointment. I'll say it plainly: I don't like the Borg queen. First Contact was a very fun movie, definitely the fastest-paced and most action-packed of the Trek movies, but the Borg queen, even taken as just a physical manifestation of the hive mind, diminishes their appeal for me.

The Borg of Q Who and Best of Both Worlds were a kind of the anti-enemy, faceless, nameless, patient, and strangely noble in their intentions. Assimilating Picard as the face of the invasion was sickening not just because it was our captain, but because the unfeeling collective was just using him in an attempt to make us feel better about our fate - but despite the good intentions, the move of course just terrified us even more. And knocking out the Borg's public relations representative was completely irrelevant - he was, after all, just the flesh of a face stretched across a body in the hive mind, a la the main Vidiian from Faces.

While I found the Seven/Janeway/Queen love triangle completely unmoving (as you probably could have guessed from the tone of my recap), I did enjoy the look into life on the Raven, the ship that Seven grew up on with her parents. Her parents get to play the naive Federation citizens, curious about the Borg, doing the Federation cultural observation thing, until their subjects turn on them. That's another of my favorite things about the Borg; the way they are very suited to subverting standard Federation procedure. Also, this back-story made possible the nice moment when Seven's drone-Dad shows up on the Borg ship, staring blankly ahead.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: I think that, due to the excitement of making an "event show," this particular concept ended up being stretched over what is simply too much time. If they'd managed to boil this episode down to the one-hour mark, I think this would've been a 4/5 (assuming the stuff they cut wasn't the Raven back-story.

S5 E14: Bliss

The teaser opens with an alien captain barreling into a giant maw in space, being shot at with lightening. When we get back to Voyager, it seems the crew has found a possible wormhole back home, straight to Earth, but everyone is skeptical. By the time Seven, Paris, and Naomi return from a survey mission on the Delta Flyer, however, everyone is quite confident that it is their ticket home, and everyone has personally received some good news. Paris is sucked right in, but Seven remains skeptical, and though the main computer seems to be among those who have thrown caution to the wind (to the point of ignoring bad sensor readings), she manages to contact the ship from the teaser - whose captain confirms her fears that the crew is being deceived. Since no one will hear her out, she activates the Doctor to help, but the crew, acting on "instructions" from "starfleet" shut him off again, subdue her, and enter the wormhole. Now the ship is trapped inside the gut of a giant space beast, which is digesting it slowly, but everyone is comatose with illusions of home - everyone but Seven, the Doctor... and Naomi, who also isn't particularly interested in returning to Earth. With the help of the other ship's captain, a man who has dedicated his life to destroying the monster in which they now reside (compared to Ahab by the Doctor), they work on getting out. Everyone but the Doctor agrees that it is okay to try to kill the thing that is trying to kill them, but he convinces them to try to sour the taste of their ships by igniting drive plasma - which appears to work at first, but it turns out to be another deception. They try again, and succeed, but I will be assuming that the entire rest of the series is an elaborate hoax inside the belly of the beast.

This episode is highly reminiscent of the second season episode Persistence of Vision, another time when the crew is disabled by visions which are custom-tailored to the individual. I liked that episode a lot - while it was marred to an extent by its "love letter to Janeway" elements, I often think back to that episode as an example of how you can do some sneaky character development. It ultimately squandered some of its character growth opportunities by focusing on just Janeway's resilience and Kes' psychic powers and allowing everyone else to be completely hoodwinked, but I still think of it fondly.

Similarly, everyone but Seven and the Doctor come out of this episode looking pretty bad. Sure, these are potent visions that they're facing, but why aren't Seven and Naomi affected at all? It appeared at first as though they simply possessed some sort of physiological immunity in addition to their lack of interest in Earth, but the final scenes indicate that no such immunity is present. That feels especially strange when I've complained several times (Night being the most recent) that half the main characters aren't actually interested in going home. In particular, Paris' interest seems pretty out of the blue: most of his (admittedly scant) character development has been about how much more of a life he has on Voyager than he did before Voyager. And Torres has on multiple occasions spoken of her apathy about returning, even before she found out that all her friends on the other side of the galaxy are dead. Her vision of a world in which the Maquis are alive after all must be tempting, but I just don't see her as being that naive.

The creature, and its nemesis captain, are very cool though. For all those complaints, I had a great time watching this episode. The pacing is excellent, the conflict is natural, and if we're just going to focus on a few characters, the Doctor, Seven, and even Naomi are not bad choices. Seven's antipathy towards returning home is subtler here than it was in Hope and Fear and is more believable as a result.

I do have one last thing to say, not really a complaint, just an observation: this could have been a Tuvok episode. I remember being disappointed that his Vulcan mental discipline offered him no protection in Persistence of Vision, and I wish it could have at least helped him this time. A Tuvok-centric episode doesn't need to be a scandalous look at his underlying emotions, it could be a celebration of what that emotional control provides to him in return. Kind of adds some more weight to the Tim Russ quote at the end of the Bride of Chaotica! review.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Fun, exciting episode, but it is a little too close to the plot of a previous episode to be taken completely on its own merits.

S5 E13: Gravity

Paris and Tuvok crash land yet another shuttle, and befriend a female alien after Tuvok saves her life. The universal translators aren't working, except the one built in to the Doctor's program, so as a decent amount of time passes, she learns english - and falls in love with Tuvok. Meanwhile, Voyager finds the gravity well that sucked the shuttle into a different layer of subspace, a place in which time moves much faster. Voyager also encounters aliens who intend to shut down this giant OSHA violation, and have to hurry to beam the away team out through a probe relay. Tuvok has to disappoint Noss, but mindmelds with her before returning her to her home, and she understands him.

What I don't mention in the recap are a pair of scenes interspersed in the story that show us some of Tuvok's rebellious childhood. You see, he had an unrequited romantic interest with a non-Vulcan, and his parents forced him to go to a Vulcan master in order to regain control of his emotions. The first scene is reasonably non-painful, since the master is calm and unflappable in the face of young Tuvok's outbursts, doesn't force his views on Tuvok, and establishes a rapport with him in a realistic manner. The second scene is of more dubious merit. It is revealed there that the reason for Tuvok's loss of control is all about his love interest, rather than a honest dispute with the precepts of emotional suppression, and it reads like an angsty teen fan-fic story.

But here's where it gets crazy: after we're done watching this episode, my wife turns to me and says something to the effect of "Doesn't Tuvok's boyhood situation feel just like the parents of a gay kid sending them to one of those gay-deprogramming camps?" And yeah, it does. The writers of Star Trek (and I'm not just talking Voyager here) have gradually, over many episodes in many seasons, boxed themselves into an odd place with the Vulcans. Even as early as TOS it is established that the Vulcans were not always unemotional, and had quite a barbarous history. But over time, through TOS, TNG, and Voyager, it became clear that Vulcans are still emotional (even when they're not undergoing Pon Farr), they just learn, in each individual's lifetime, to repress their emotions. That puts us in the situation where Vulcans must go through some sort of social programming at a very young age in order to conform to their social norms.

Now, I love Vulcans. I love their even temper, their sometimes pragmatic-to-the-point-of-cynicism approach to life, and their resilience in the faces of innumerable jerk-wad co-workers who feel the need to brag about their "unique" emotions on a seemingly daily basis. And that's why I'm uncomfortable with the picture that this episode is painting of Vulcan society. It's not really this episode's fault though: the writers just took an honest look at the implications of what we know about Vulcans by now, and this is what they got. I guess I just would have been happier if they'd try to fix the problem, rather than just depressing me with an illustration of the problem.

However, it is this episode's fault that it is primarily a trite love story, and a continued collision of characters who don't have any chemistry together. There are a lot of love stories out there. In my book, if you're going to write a new one, you've got to have something really clever up your sleeve. One of my favorite things about Star Trek, and sci-fi in general, is that these shows tend to avoid the general cliche that every story has to have an element of romance. But here we got a teen angst story with Tuvok being regretful that he has to make someone else feel the emotion that broke his own emotional control when he was young. Bleh. The passage of time is not very well conveyed on the planet scenes, leaving the viewer to guess that the reason people are acting funny is that months have passed (until it is established later on in a Voyager-based scene). Also, the writers seem to like to combine Tuvok and Paris a lot in their stories, and I can't tell why. Nothing about the duo works for me. Paris' jabs about logic just come off as pathetic, and Tuvok's wit is completely lost on a character as aloof as Tom. Tuvok works much better with the Doctor, or Seven, or Chakotay, or Torres, or Kim, or Janeway, or Neelix.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: When I asked for a Tuvok story in my last review, this is by no stretch of the imagination what I meant. So Tim Russ isn't feeling challenged; that doesn't mean you have to give him a boring love story. It isn't even like he had much actual emotion to show here anyways.

S5 E12: Bride of Chaotica!

Paris and Kim are running a Captain Proton holodeck adventure, when (you'll never guess!) the holodeck malfunctions. Voyager has been caught in a ribbon of subspace, and no amount of power to the engines will get them out. In the meantime, the Proton story has been invaded by photonic life-forms who take the simulation at face value and have begun a full-scale assault on Proton's nemesis, Chaotica. They won't respond to the biological crew members, as they register as nothing but simulations to them. To end this war, the Doctor plays the role of the President of Earth in order to negotiate a cease-fire, while Janeway poses as Arachnia (queen of the spider people), aiming to bring Chaotica's lightning shield down. Once the opening is created, Paris/Proton comes in and saves the day with his death ray. The aliens leave and Voyager is no longer tied to the subspace ribbon.

The photonic aliens are a stretch at best, but that's not really what this episode is about. This is a "just for fun" episode, but it is a very different kind of fluff from an episode like Counterpoint. Instead of intrigue fluff, this is outright comedy fluff, and though not all the jokes are home runs, I managed to have a good time. So far, the Captain Proton simulations have felt strange to me, much like Janeway's Gothic Romance simulation: they haven't seemed very interactive. The characters just seemed to be acting out a pre-determined part with a script they've memorized, but without the audience that one expects for that kind of performance. I found it odd that Naomi's program, Flotter, the one for children, seemed more interactive than the programs for adults. It's clearer in this episode that the program is adaptive, adjusting as new elements are added to the scenario by the aliens. So, instead, Paris is just LARPing - against mostly AI opponents.

I don't really have much to add to that. It was fun, and mostly funny. I do have one observation though: in the conference room scene, where Paris has to map out the events that have occurred and those that are yet to happen in the scenario, Tuvok looks pissed. Like, out-of-character angry. As mentioned previously, the memory alpha annotations this season are but a shadow of what they were for the previous four, so I'm going to have to make some conjecture here: if I were Tim Russ, I'd be upset too if, in the show in which I had more lines than my other eleven appearances in the season put together, I were still just a minor background guy. I mean seriously, what is up? Tuvok is great, why aren't they using him?

Okay, I did some research. Apparently, during the fifth season, Tim Russ took some time off to pursue his music career - a side gig that he took up in part because he was feeling a bit stifled by his role as Tuvok. And, while he and I may not share the same taste in music, he's got a decent voice. But this is a plea from me to Tim Russ in the Past: don't leave me here. Voyager can be a scary place. You're good at playing this Tuvok guy - hang in there for a couple more seasons. Please.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Fun show, but we need some more Tuvok, please.

Tim Russ Quote: "I think it's going to be a little bit different coming out of the gate, but definitely from a network standpoint, they are still promoting Jeri [Ryan] to try to sell the show, which I never really understood. The show has its own audience; we're not going to be an E.R., we're not going to be a Cheers, it's just not that kind of show. The ratings have been the same since the show started."

S5 E11: Latent Image

While taking cellular level holographic snapshots of the crew, the Doctor discovers that eighteen months ago he performed surgery on Harry Kim - but no one, including himself, can remember those events. Seven helps him uncover more clues, but when she activates him again, his memories of the past day have been erased, deepening the mystery. The next time he deactivates himself, he sets the computer to automatically restore any files that are deleted while he's offline, and positions his holographic recorder to capture the image of anyone who comes in to tamper with his files. He catches the culprit: Janeway. She tells him that they are deleting those files for his own good, and he is understandably irate. Seven, disturbed by this treatment of the Doctor, confronts Janeway about her actions, saying the Doctor deserves an explanation. Janeway reluctantly relents: eighteen months ago, the Doctor had been in a situation where he had two patients with equal injuries, equal chance of survival, and had to choose which to treat first, with the understanding that the other one would likely die. In the moment, he chose his friend, Kim (rather than the ensign we've never seen), but later developed a feedback loop between his personality and ethical protocols as a result of that decision. Because he could not come to terms with that choice, Janeway had been forced to have Torres delete part of his program. Upon learning of these events, the loop is refreshed, and the Doctor is once again beside himself with regret and remorse. This time, rather than give him the easy way out, Janeway decides that this is an important milestone in his development, and makes sure he is kept online but not on duty, with someone to talk to at all times, while he works his way through this hard time.

I'll start with the bad news: this episode would have been much more powerful three seasons ago. While we wouldn't have had Seven at that point to act as the Doctor's advocate, it would have occurred during the time when Janeway was acting more outwardly dismissive of the Doctor. It seems out of place when she starts equating him with the replicator; I thought she had moved past that a while ago. If this were to replace an episode like Lifesigns it would have given a more consistent arc for the Doctor's development. Similarly, if The Measure of a Man had happened later in TNG's run, it would have felt a little out of place.

But it still would have been a great episode, just as this one was. Picardo acts the hell out of this episode; the mess hall scene alone, when he begins breaking down for the first time, throwing food around, was amazing. He has been forced into a horrifying choice, one that wouldn't have been as hard if all he had were his ethical subroutines; after all, two patients, but one is senior staff, that makes it an easy choice for, say, a Vulcan or an Android to make. But the Doctor is different, this is where his character diverges from that of Spock or Data; he has emotions that, for better or worse, complicate things for him. And because he has been running for so long, so much longer than intended, he has grown in unexpected ways.

Which is why it is so hard, as the viewer to see him like this. We've accepted him as a member of the crew from the beginning. It wasn't hard: he is easily the best actor, and the most likeable character - he has more personality alone than any eight other members of the crew combined. To see him frantic, manic, and distraught like this is awful. To see that some members of the crew still don't buy into him the way we do is chilling.

I am grateful that, while I have been in triage situations frequently, I have never had to make a decision like the Doctor had to here. The initial choice is bad enough, but it would happen so quickly that this episode is right, the worst part would be dealing with it afterwords. Even if you could point to the enumerated reasons for making the choice you did, it would be a struggle to prevent yourself from running the events over and over in your mind. And if your mind moved at the speed of a computer...

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: It's in the wrong season, but I won't hold that against a powerful story like this one.

S5 E10: Counterpoint

Voyager is in an area of space where they must regularly submit to armed inspectors (Devore) looking for rogue telepaths. Voyager has been hiding its Vulcans, Betazoid, and some other telepathic refugees in the transporter buffer during these inspections, but repeated uses of the technology for prolonged concealment have begun to take their toll on the contraband people. Voyager is about to make a break for a rendezvous point when the leader of the inspection teams (Kashyk) shows up in civilian clothes, offering to defect - and revealing that the current rendezvous is a trap. The information he gives them checks out, so Janeway allows him to help them find the wormhole the refugees seek, and to make out with her. Upon nearly reaching the wormhole, an inspection team finds them, and Kashyk offers to buy them time by returning to his people and throwing them off the trail. This sets up his obvious betrayal, but Janeway is one step ahead of him: the telepaths have left on shuttles that use the same cloak-shielding that he Devore use. To save face, Kashyk lets her go.

Finally! A shorter review! This is a fluffier episode than the last few, with betrayals, counter-betrayals, and counter-counter-betrayals all set to some light-hearted classical music. Actually, that music (by Tchaikovsky and Mahler) is a highlight of the episode; I just wish more Voyager episodes had such interesting background music. Kashyk's deceit is pretty obvious for most of the episode, especially after the countless (okay, you could count them but I'm too lazy and there are a lot of them) times that the Voyage crew has been tricked or taken advantage of. That being the case, it is especially satisfying for them to effectively play Kashyk right back. Now, if Garak were part of this crew, Kashyk would show up back on Voyager only to be told that while he was staying with them and eating their food he ingested a micro-bomb for which Garak has a remote, and would he please instruct the inspectors to leave if he wishes to keep his intestines from decorating the walls. That doesn't happen, and his release of the Voyager crew is less believable as a result, but you can't have everything.

Janeway's casual discarding of the Prime Directive here is especially odd in light of the events from Thirty Days. Now, I have no problem with her helping the oppressed telepaths (I mean as long as she's hiding her Vulcans too she might as well), but if she'll defend that law to the point where she'll let a whole world be destroyed in a temporal inferno (Time and Again), this is quite the departure. This episode even contrasts starkly with her stance in Prototype, that before interfering, we should at least know what we're getting in to. I can still see her helping the telepaths, but I'd expect her to be a bit more cautious; who knows perhaps the telepaths are being persecuted because, before they were exiled, they themselves brutally persecuted the Devore, using their powers malevolently. The Prime Directive is an imperfect document, and was designed to be that way to bring drama to a captain's life; it is a captain's prerogative to make a tough decision to break it. In this episode, though, that decision is pushed into off-screen events, leaving us with Janeway's flippant line about leaving it up to instinct.

After Janeway was cut loose from her long-time relationship with Mark in Prey, she was opened up for new romances; this is the first episode to take advantage of that. Her relationship with Kashyk was used here mostly to make it seem as if she had been completely hoodwinked by him, but the two do actually have some chemistry. He is one of the few people in the entire Trek universe that she treats as if he were her intellectual equal. The romance doesn't work out for obvious reasons, but I'm hoping that the writers can see why it worked and maybe tone down the condescension a bit.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Taken as a more light-hearted episode, it is very entertaining. This episode, though its score in the GEOS system is not exceptional, was listed as Janeway's favorite in a 2001 BBC2 special. What's more, it won in the related telephone polling of the fans. Its competition? Shatner and Brooks picked "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Far Beyond the Stars" two Trek heavyweights, but I guess I can understand that they came from series that are less popular among people who were still watching Trek after Voyager. That, and Stewart's pick was the execrable "In Theory", which he can be excused for thinking of fondly because it was his directorial debut, but isn't something I can imagine anyone wanting to watch intentionally.

S5 E09: Thirty Days

Paris has been demoted and sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement. Through the composition of a letter to his father, we the viewers discover what has happened. Voyager found an ocean in space - its inhabitants, though unwelcoming at first, accept their assistance in discovering the cause for recent losses in mass. Paris and company take the Delta Flyer in to the center of the ocean, and find an ancient gravity generator that has been holding the ocean together; but it is now straining to its limits due to the oxygen mining that the Moneans are engaging in. When it is clear that the Moneans have no interest in shutting down their oxygen mines to save their world, Paris and Riga (a Monean scientist) steal the Flyer and try to blow up the mines. Janeway stops him, and demotes him for his actions. Paris is unrepentant.

First, let me say that the special effects in this episode are exceptional, easily some of the best in the series. In particular, any time an object enters or leaves the ocean (Monean ships, the Flyer, or a torpedo) is very well realized. The underwater Monean cities are gorgeous, and the reactor at the center of the ocean is cool looking too. It's pretty clear that they ran out of budget by the time they got to the giant eel, since we don't even hear it being fired upon, but that's okay, there was still plenty of eye-candy. The science of the space ocean is fairly ridiculous, particularly the idea that mining the oxygen out of the water would somehow increase the overall mass, or make it more difficult to hold the water around the reactor. But, for me, the overall coolness of the finished product is enough for me to shrug the inconsistencies off.

The issue of punishment on Voyager came up for me just one episode ago, when I was watching Nothing Human and Tabor said that he wanted to be relieved of duty. That wasn't exactly a crime situation, it just occurred to me that the issue of how to punish people that you need to keep your ship functioning still hadn't really been satisfactorily addressed yet - if Tabor wanted to go on strike, what would they have done about it? I'm glad I didn't get into it in the review for that episode, since it is a much more appropriate topic for discussion here. So far, the punishments we've seen are: Stern talkings-to for Torres and Tuvok for mutiny in Prime Factors, Neelix needing to scrub something engineeringy for a few weeks for theft and deceit (Fair Trade), and Lon Suder getting solitary confinement in his quarters for murder (Meld). Tom's solitary confinement in the brig, though limited in duration, puts even the punishment for murder to shame.

There are only a handful of people on Voyager to whom demotion would actually mean anything - fortunately, they're mostly the people we see every week. It came up as an option in Scorpion, Part II when Chakotay "disobeyed an order," and while I harbor no ill-will towards him for his actions there, it would have been really interesting to see the ramifications for Janeway if she'd demoted from first officer her liaison to the Maquis part of the crew. Paris is one of the main characters for whom demotion probably means the least; he is so saturated with bravado that you can actually see it kind of encouraging him. It adds to his personal narrative of "Tom Paris the rebel," and since he feels so good about the cause he has picked it emboldens him even further, to the point where he pens (figuratively, no one can write in the 24th century) a letter to the father that he avoids even thinking about.

As much as this is a bit of a step back for Paris' in-show character, I consider this to be a huge step forward for his character's development; the lack of which I have been bemoaning for some time. The writers have, in general, seemed unsure of what to do with him up until now, and I think this choice was great. This action makes him more of a Mal Reynolds than Chakotay ever was: an anti-hero, trying to do what's right by him while exhibiting a casual disregard for the rules. He has made a decision that he will not measure personal success by the standards that Admiral Paris has set for him, while still attempting to be a beneficent type of rebel. I just hope that the writers can stick with this direction for him.

Despite appreciating the strides in character development here, and being among those who are uncomfortable with the power creep that the Prime Directive has experienced by the time of Voyager, I do disagree with his choices. By Voyager standards, Janeway already has violated the Prime Directive just by giving the oxygen replicating technology to the Moneans. As much as it is a short-sighted choice on the part of the Moneans to not immediately implement said technology, as long as their actions are only injurious to themselves, I agree with the Directive's protection of their autonomy to do so. I certainly can't blame Paris for wanting to do something about it, and I can't even really blame him for taking action either, but destructive action is not the course of action I would have taken.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: This episode is indispensable as an example of how to turn around a faltering character. It remains to be seen whether it will be an example that the writers build off of going forward, but I've got my fingers crossed.

S5 S08: Nothing Human

Voyager responds to an indecipherable distress call, and rescues a lone slithering bug thing. The bug assaults Torres, wrapping around her and integrating itself into her systems. The Doctor's exobiology skills are not up to the task of removing it, so with Kim's help he conjures up a hologram based on a famour exobiologist to help him: a Cardassian named Crell Moset. Torres is uncomfortable with a Cardassian helping, but the Doctor takes an immediate liking to him. When the program malfunctions, a Bajoran engineering staffer, Tabor, helps reactivate him, but immediately recognizes him as the man who performed brutal experiments on Bajorans to further his groundbreaking research. Torres is now certain that she doesn't want him helping the Doctor, and refuses any assistance whatsoever. Paris and Chakotay debate the issue in the briefing room, but Janeway makes the executive decision that, as the captain, Torres' life is her responsibility, and she wants whatever means are necessary to be used. The operation is a success, but the Doctor chooses to delete Moset's program and research afterwards. Torres is furious that Janeway did not respect her wishes, but rather than cite executive privilege, Janeway decides that it is best to taunt and insult her.

I'm frustrated by the set-up for the moral dilemma here. Rather than use a delta quadrant person, so they could actually have the real criminal aboard the ship, we have an imperfect facsimile. It isn't really Moset helping them: he could easily have been put in a different skin and fitted with a different personality profile. The obvious parallel is Jetrel, which was anchored in "reality" by having the actual guy there, and his presence having an effect on a major member of the cast. The element of the Doctor's initial aloofness to the possibility of a problem with a Cardassian helps make the dilemma seem less contrived, but it still feels like a stretch to me.

The fact that it is this easy to create a competent holographic crew member has weird implications too; the Doctor is different because he is the culmination of years of effort, and he is still imperfect. But if you can just go around creating brilliant holograms as the result of thirty seconds of messing with the computer, why have people? And then there's the fact that Kim's prowess here is explicitly contrary to his attempts to recreate the Doctor in Message in a Bottle. In terms of continuity, though, there is at least the precedent from The Swarm that it wouldn't be easy to just dump the exobiology knowledge into the Doctor instead.

All of that said, I love Crell Moset. Well, I'm stricken with love for the Cardassians in general, and my affection for Moset could probably be seen as a symptom of that malady. His characterization is perfect: his slyly genial demeanor, his endearing arrogance (which makes him quite the match for the Doctor), he is not a carbon copy of any specific Cardassian personalities that we're familiar with while still fitting the mold comfortably.

Now, while Moset's hologrammatical nature here separates him from the story somewhat, the show does benefit by not making the moral dilemma be "was Crell Moset a good guy?" The episode assumes we're all on the same page that klling some people so that others can be treated is not okay, and I think that's a fair assumption. Moset still gets a little time on the soapbox to remind us that not everyone is okay with animal testing, but these are essentially two moral dilemmas in play here: (A) can we, in good conscience, benefit from research that was performed unethically and (B) should we give life-sustaining treatment to someone who refuses it?

In terms of (A), I'm not sure I agree with the Doctor. I certainly don't agree with Moset's methods, and think that individuals engaging in them should be stopped and punished, but the pragmatist in me considers it to be an injustice to the people who died under his scalpel to throw away what he learned from them. Tabor may think differently, and he's welcome to do so, but to block out life-saving knowledge just because it had been unethically obtained is also an injustice to anyone who could be saved using it. But what is good about this episode is that the characters engage in open, honest debate about it, and it is accepted that neither course of action is 100% right and just. That's a win right there.

Moral dilemma (B) is perhaps even more charged, especially since Janeway goes against the laws we have in place in our society today. If you want to, you can refuse treatment. If you're a Jehovah's Witness and you present into an emergency room after sustaining a serious traumatic injury, losing copious amounts of blood, and the only way I can save your life is to give you blood, but you refuse it because it is against your religion, there's nothing I can do. I just have to let you go, knowing I've sent you home to die when I could have saved your life. I have come to terms with that, since a person's autonomy is very important to me.

That said, I completely accept Janeway's actions here. She is not the captain of a ship of civilians. She needs Torres alive so she can keep her ship running. If this were a non-military situation, I'd probably think differently, but since Torres is subservient to her, a member of her crew, I feel that she is justified in going against her wishes. She gave both sides of the argument a chance to express themselves, shut down the debate when it was clear it was going nowhere, and made an executive decision. I like that too. Janeway, at her best, is at least very decisive. Her good leadership quality is that she does know the value of taking action. And that is not to say that she doesn't weigh her options, or reflect upon them afterwards, just that she doesn't hem and haw over a tough choice.

There, I've said something nice about Janeway. I was feeling really quite non-negatively about her during this episode, right up until the last scene, where she elicits Torres' feelings on the matter. She asks Torres how she is feeling; Torres, who is in her room meditating rather than turning into a rabid Klingon and ripping out Janeway's throat with her bare teeth. And when Torres tells her she's angry, she has the gall to insult her and tell her she's wrong to feel that way. This is Janeway at her worst. She is not big enough to accept that people are not going to agree with her on everything. Her arrogance is so overpowering that it is only rivaled by the insecurity that drives her to try to bend everyone to thinking her way on everything. This is why she cannot resist an "I told you so," this is why she has to feel better than everyone by acting condescendingly to them. Enjoy your #9 spot on the season review character lists, Janeway; since Neelix's ascension, there's no one who could even hope to challenge you for it.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: Despite my misgivings about the set-up and Janeway's meltdown at the end, this is a good, well-rounded, limitedly preachy episode.

S5 E07: Infinite Regress

Seven is behaving strangely - acting at times like a Klingon or a child. Voyager's crew traces her personality disorder to a signal emanating from the wreckage of a Borg ship. The core of the ship, its vinculum, has become infected in its non-organic circuitry, which Seven traces back to another Borg victim (species 6339). While attempting to take the vinculum off line, Voyager also tracks down 6339, who are enraged that they are tampering with it. They have almost been assimilated to extinction, and this was their last hope of fighting back. Janeway is unwilling to give up the vinculum until they can shut it down, so in a last ditch attempt (the previous attempt failed because it was destabilizing Seven) Tuvok melds with Seven during the shutdown to help hold her together. It works, and the vinculum is relinquished.

I have nothing but sympathy for species 6339. Sure, their solution is absurdly ludicrous - seriously writers, all you had to do was switch virus with bacteria, and it would have been vastly more believable. Guys, viruses exist by invading biological cells and reproducing inside them. A virus that attacks machinery makes no sense. Bacteria, which possess their own reproductive capabilities, could, theoretically, be engineered to enter a non-biological realm without dying out in a couple hours.

Anyways, where was I? Oh, yes, 6339. Sympathy. So they have just a couple ships left, out of an entire civillization. They hatch this scheme to sacrifice a few of the people that they have left to infect, kill, and possibly beat the Borg. Then Voyager comes along and, because one of their crew is a former Borg, they're working to put the kibosh on the whole plan. It's fustrating, largely because the obvious solution (running away until they're out of range of the transmissions) was technobabbled out. So now we're forced into the choice of stopping this beleaguered species' last-ditch revenge effort or allowing a single named, free Borg to die in the process. That's an interesting dilemma, and it makes sense that Janeway can't in good conscience allow 6339 to proceed, but at the same time I cannot find it in myself to blame 6339 for trying anyways. The resolution is not very satisfying, since it is effectively the same as the run away approach.

I did enjoy Seven's reflections on the people that she has helped to assimilate. It had a good The Raven feel to it - another decent episode that deserved a (at least in spirit) follow-up. I was very impressed by Jeri Ryan's acting when she was possessed by the various different personalities. It was practically as if a different voice was coming out of her at times. Tuvok's meld with her is engaging, and the mood created by the effect inside Seven's mind is good.

The writers have also found a new and exciting way for Janeway to have "I told you so" moments. In this episode, she has a moment of doubt about Seven, and points out to Chakotay that he had doubted whether she would ever fit in. Chakotay chimes in and says something to the effect of "I was wrong about her, and you were right in every way. Your rightness is blinding, and it is only through that shining light of rectitude that we lowly subservients can ever hope to stagger towards the truth. I cannot imagine a set of circumstances in the future that would cause me to stray from the path."

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: An entertaining episode with some decent food for thought but ultimately has a frustrating conculsion.

S5 E06: Timeless

Chakotay and Kim find Voyager, buried beneath a glacier - in the future. A series of flashbacks reveal that Voyager had installed a slipstream drive, one that Paris had found some last minute problems with. Kim formulates a plan to ride ahead of Voyager (with Chakotay instead of Paris) and send them data to solve the problem, but he fails and Voyager suffers the fate we see in the first minutes of the episode. The new plan is to find the Doctor's emitter, and use a piece of Borg technology (that they've stolen from the Federation) to send a message through Seven and time to save the ship. Their first attempt is a failure, and they've run out of time and have come under fire from a federation ship under the command of Geordi LaForge. Kim and the Doctor come up with a last minute plan change that will prevent Voyage from getting home using the drive, but also prevent them from dieing. Everything is reset to normal, but Kim at least receives a message from his future self telling him he owes him one.

Years ago, when I made my first attempt to give Voyager a second chance by cherry-picking episodes from "best of Voyager" lists, I made it through two episodes: Year of Hell and this one. I was so disgusted that two of the top ranked episodes both contained complete reset buttons that I never watched any more. I liked Year of Hell better this time around, so I had hoped that my supposition had been correct - that my lack of investment in the characters was the reason that I hadn't enjoyed these episodes. I did not find that to be the case this time.

Sal mentioned in his comment on my Deadlock review that Kim's death midway through the episode ruined the episode for him because it made it clear that it would be a reset. That episode was saved for me because its reset had a nice twist to it at least. Here, we see popsicle Janeway in the first scene following the trailer, even before it is definitively revealed that Kim and Chakotay are from the future. That starts a long sequence of Kim-angst that culminates in an entirely unsurprising reset. A note to the Voyager writers: when your reset has Kim successfully getting Voyager home to Earth, your viewers are going to know that something will go wrong to maintain the status quo, ruining any attempt at suspense. What worked so well for me in Deadlock is that my expectations of a complete reset were so effectively subverted.

The "Kim's enthusiasm for getting home as a tragic flaw" elements are compelling, at least. That part is good writing: it is a perfectly natural way to set up the plot of the show. It flows naturally from established elements of Kim's character. I don't think Garrett Wang played bitterKim particularly well or subtly, but the part was written appropriately. The dryness, the frustration, and the snarkiness are all good; "They're having sex" as he rolls his eyes was quite amusing.

Ah, yes, I didn't mention it in the recap, but there's kind of an odd subplot with Chakotay and this woman who he has fallen in love with. She's helping Kim and Chakotay on their crime-spree-Voyager-resurrection, even though it means she'll probably never meet Chakotay. I guess the idea was to give something for Chakotay to do while Kim carries most of the weight of the episode. But in this very same episode there's another awkward Janeway/Chakotay romantic dinner (in the flashbacks). Jeri Taylor is the couple's strongest champion, and I know that resigned as an executive producer at the end of the fourth season, so I didn't expect to see any more of these.

One last note of frustration: in the epilogue, Janeway engages in some particularly annoying lampshade hanging. When Kim asks her how the temporal mechanics of this episode work, she just says "My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: Don't even try." Really? Thanks Voyager writers, thanks for telling me to just shut off my brain when watching your creations. Well too bad, I refuse. And here, I'll even take a minute significantly more than a minute and make sense of it for you, because you're too lazy.

Time travel doesn't have to follow the Back to the Future model; no one's done it before (aside from moving forward through time at a rate of one second per second), and there are no real models of how it might be done, so you're free to come up with your own magical explanation. In the BttF model, all time flows in one stream. When you alter the course of the stream, the parts of the stream further down its path that no longer have water (henceforth shorthand for objects in the time stream) in it disappear, even if they have already been transported (using magical time travel) into a part of the stream where the water is still there. This leads to dramatic vanishing moments, but is problematic since any time something needs to happen to the past of Michael J Fox, the rules need to be thrown out so that he doesn't just disappear for the rest of the movie.

Trek, fairly consistently, uses different model. If, through magical time travel, an object or person alters the time stream just that he/she/it will no longer exist, they are just added to the water in the new time stream. They continue to exist because they are simply another object in the time stream, moving forward at 1s/1s. The line between parallel universes and altered time streams is very blurred in Trek, and I think, if the writers wanted to, it would be easy(ish) to tie the two together in a manner that would explain the Trek time travel model. If your sci-fi universe accepts the conceit that there is a separate universe for each different possible outcome - which Trek appears to based on episodes like Parallels - you could make the statement that time travel creates a new set of parallel universes. That way, the old universe will continue to exist, supplying the (now out of place) person or object that does the time travel and the altering. Again, this is all magical to start out with, but this model is at least internally consistent with episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise or Children of Time.

Of course, the Trek writers haven't made that statement. Up until now, they've left it to the imagination of their viewers. That's cool, but I want more than just what I can dream up in my own head. I like to hear other people's ideas. But now, in Voyager (and this is not the first time that Janeway has made a statement like this), the writers are asking us not to even try to think about it. Phooey.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: I know this is a fan favorite, but, personally, I really can't go any higher than a three.

S5 E05: Once Upon a Time

Smanatha Wildman is on a dangerous mission aboard the Delta Flyer with Paris and Tuvok when an ion storm causes them to crash land on an inhospitable world. Naomi is left in the care of Neelix, who tries to shelter her from the truth so that she might not know the pain that he did when he lost his family. She figures out what is going on, and is mad at him at first, but the two come to comfort each other. Samantha is rescued successfully, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I really like the idea of the Flotter holoprogram. In short, it is an interactive children's book that encourages creative problem solving. What is really fun is that, when other members of the crew describe their childhood Flotter experiences, they reveal that they each took the program in a different direction. While I would have some concern that a child who is raised with that sort of immersive, fantastical world might have trouble wanting to actually participate in the real world (though I'm sure Jane McGonigal would probably disagree), the program doesn't seem to pull any punches. There are genuinely scary (to children) villains, episodes with large-scale destruction, and the potential death of the main character. The program also encourages doing outside research in order to figure out solutions in the game. This element gets my seal of approval.

In my opinion, the "shielding kids from the truth is bad" trope is tired, but using Neelix's loss of his own family as a driving motivation for his actions works well. Neelix's over-protectiveness of Kes was just petty jealousy and insecurity, while his guardianship here (while the script does side against him overall) comes across as noble due to his personal damage. To be perfectly fair, Naomi is an abnormally well-adjusted child (maybe due to her awesome holoprogram?), and not every child would necessarily adapt to the news that her mother may be dead quite as well as she does.

Janeway, of course, delights in the opportunity to condescend to Neelix about his choice to not tell Naomi the whole truth. I mean, I think it would have been best for Neelix to tell her the truth, but I can also see where he's coming from: Samantha's not dead, she may come back just fine, it is hard to see a benefit to telling Naomi that her mother is in danger of dieing. Great you told her, now she won't come out from under the bed until her mom comes back, good work there. All I mean to say is, it isn't an obvious choice, but when Janeway approaches Neelix about it, she is full-on "what you're doing is dumb, and you are dumb for doing it." I think that's my biggest problem with Janeway: it is one thing to be an all-or-nothing black-and-white moralist, but to also be allergic to the idea that anyone could possibly come to a different conclusion from yours, to the point where you go into full-blown anaphylaxis when confronted, that drives me nuts. Sure, they can make some character act that way, but to have that character also be the ship's captain is incredibly frustrating.

I did honestly expect Samantha to die here. She's not a main character, and Naomi being Neelix's charge could easily be handled with minimal continuity if the writers wanted to. Since it would be easy to kill her, I thought the writers would do it; while her rescue is definitely a subversion of expectations, I'm not entirely happy with it. The original BSG was an exceptionally campy show, with Voyager levels of continuity, and even they were willing to give a major male character the guardianship of a child who was born to a woman that he was not married to. As annoying as Boxy and his robo-dog were, I consider that to be the bravest element of that series.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: This episode is right on the edge between 4 and 5 for me, but the Janeway scenes and the ending were enough to tip it down a slight notch.