| Moving ahead of Voyager is a team of con-artists, stealing and deceiving in the name of Starfleet. Janeway catches wind of their trickery when a ship arrives, demanding of Voyager some dilithium they'd been promised by the impostors. A circumstantial bit of of information from the victims allows the crew to trace their first contact with the villains back to a pair of "monks" who Neelix and Paris met on an away mission. Voyager catches up to the crooks right after they've been caught selling Federation memberships to opposing sides in a war, but the transporter lock only catches the Janeway impostor before the ship jumps to warp. The fake won't cooperate, so Janeway hatches a plan to let her escape, and track her to her ship with Paris and the Doctor aboard. The Doctor masquerades as fake Janeway, buying time for Voyager to capture the rest of the criminals. |
There's not much to this episode besides fun and silliness, but I'd say it does deliver on both counts. The impostors are fun to watch and make for a good parody of the Federation. The fake Janeway is mostly just a predictable con-artist stereotype, all cunning and no ethics, but fake Tuvok is actually interesting. He's gotten into his role so much that he has trouble dropping character, and begins to feel bad about his crew's treachery. Fortunately, he also manages to avoid the cliche of feeling so bad that he turns them over, though he does recommend that at one point. His is not a part that is played out a lot when it isn't used as an important plot device, and I appreciate that.
The best scene by far belongs to Neelix, Paris, and the Doctor. Neelix and Paris have begun to worry that they've lost their touch - they used to do their share of deceit but they were both completely fooled by the "monks." They're devastated, but Neelix thinks maybe they could get their groove back by working a little shell game on an unsuspecting mark. Their victim, the Doctor, plays right into it, but is able to determine that the nut is in Neelix's hand instead of one of the cups, thus deflating their egos even more. The scene is revisited at the end of the episode, and they are able to trick the Doctor, but it wasn't really necessary for the writers to go back to that - Neelix and Paris were already part of the plan to capture the fakes.
The grandstanding done by the real crew about how much more awesome they are is minimal, and largely from Janeway only. I expect that of her, I'm working on blocking it out altogether. Neelix's approach, while still somewhat saccharine, at least isn't so self-righteous. I really could do without all this exposition about how awesome Janeway is though. I get it; they've created a character that isn't as interesting as they think she is. The solution is not to just tell the viewers how awesome she is, over and over and over. Kirk, Picard, and Sisko weren't great because the characters said they were great - we loved them because they were heroes who took heroic actions and made heroic, sometimes self-sacrificing choices. Kirk was heroic because he could give up someone he loved to restore the timeline. Picard was heroic because he would put his Starfleet career on the line for the truth. Sisko was heroic because he sacrificed his own sense of honor in order to save the alpha quadrant. I can think of multiple examples for each of those captains. I'm having trouble thinking of a single one for Janeway, and I've written over a hundred and seventy single-spaced pages about her adventures.
Watchability: 4/5
Bottom Line: Rants about Janeway aside, this was a fun episode, and gets the fun episode score.
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