| Seven is contacted in a dream by a group of Borg drones who, through a mutation, have regained their individuality while they are regenerating. The collective is close to being able to infiltrate their separate network, so they ask Seven for her assistance. Janeway agrees to help after meeting with them through a three-way mindmeld, and the crew hatches a scheme to infect the hive with a "nanovirus" that will allow these drones to keep their individuality while awake. This plan involves getting Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok assimilated into the collective. To be continued... |
Though it is entirely unrelated to the plot, Paris is re-promoted here, and it is a complete waste of what could have been a dramatic moment. They could have built a big Paris episode, and done it then. Or, they could have promoted Kim instead, and played with the dynamic of Kim as Paris' superior officer for a while. They even lampshaded Kim's lack of promotions in this scene before moving on with the plot. Instead it just looks like the writers forgot that they haven't re-promoted Paris yet, and wanted to get it out of the way before another season rolls around.
A Borg "underground" is an interesting way to approach the weak spot that the Borg need to have every time Voyager encounters them. The technobabble surrounding them is oddly vague, and I'd rather they just didn't attempt to explain the cause at all - after all, these drones obviously cannot be doing research on it while active, so odds are they wouldn't even know. It also seems unnecessary that Seven happened to be a part of this second collective and can't remember it. This feels distinctly different from the back-story in Survival Instinct, and I'll try to articulate how; in Survival Instinct, the "Hey, here's some back-story you didn't have" parts were understated, the events were clearly something whose significance was greater to the other three involved than it was to Seven. That difference made it easier to swallow, especially given Seven doesn't remember a whole love interest from her time in the underground. And since we've already done a "Seven got separated from the hive while she was still a drone" story, It would have been nice if there were some sort of tie-in between those episode. Of course, the writers can't even remember that this is actually the third time that they had Seven dream, so that's probably a bit too much to hope for.
I had worked out just about this much of the review in my head when I went to the memory alpha page and read this: "The original story, pitched by future Voyager and Enterprise staffer Mike Sussman, was to have featured the return of Seven's father, Magnus Hansen. In that version, it would have been revealed that the Borgified Hansen had managed to create a "cyber underground" where like-minded drones could meet and plan an insurgency against the Collective. Hansen would have called upon his daughter to help in their fight, giving Seven hope that her father might someday be liberated from the Collective, as she had been. The producers opted to pursue a romantic story for Seven instead of a father-daughter reunion."
While this is a wiki, editable by anyone, and that quote does not cite a source, it explains a lot. The romance does feel shoehorned in, especially when the lines related to it don't even make any sense. I mean, at first, the guy doesn't say anything about it to Seven; a decision which, when confronted about it after Seven dimly recalls a relationship, was based on his determination that, because she did not remember it, it wasn't his place. In other words, it wasn't relevant, as she was no longer the same person. Seven is very strangely off-put by that choice of actions, and in what seems to be an attempt to distance herself from him, tells him that their relationship is irrelevant. But even though that was essentially his position in the first place, for some reason he takes umbrage with her saying it. The cognitive dissonance here is killing me.
Look, I don't care if the writers don't want to care about consistency, but would it kill them to be consistent within a single episode? Forget the fact that a story about her dad, urging her to join the Borg resistance, would be six hundred times more compelling than some schmuck we've never met before - I just want them to make this one story that they've chosen make sense. I'm not even talking about the whole two-part cliffhanger. I'm sure the next part wasn't even written when this was first aired, I just want this one to be constructed logically. There are all these unconscious world sequences, and then there's a Klingon who threatens to kill someone, but they're all like "It's cool, I'll just respawn," but then when the Borg infiltrate the underground and they dream-assimilate people they are permanently despawned and their locations are recorded, but if you're a Klingon you come equipped in your dreamstate with a Bat'leth like you're a damn action figure, but somehow even after you're unconscious in your dream, another person can pick up a figment of your imagination and gut a drone with it. Oh, and then the Delta Flyer is destroyed but that's not a big deal because it wasn't really a big deal to make it in the first place.
Watchability: 2/5
Bottom Line: When one Starfleet officer was abducted by the Borg, I held my breath, fingers gripping the armrests, bolt upright in the chair, and was full of anticipation. Now, when three officers are abducted, I'm kind of glad I don't have the next disc here yet, because it means my wife and I get to watch something interesting next instead.
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