S7 E15: The Void

Voyager gets sucked into an area of space that is void of all matter, and is immediately attacked by enemy ships. Another ship, captained by a man named Valen, arrives and he welcomes them to this area of space that has no way out and is filled with people who will do anything to survive. He offers to trade for some supplies, but Janeway is unwilling to trade him any photon torpedoes. Low on resources after the attack, she is faced with asking her crew to die for her their principles. One by one, she manages to recruit a number of other ships into an alliance of good will, and by working together they make their way out of the void.

This is generally a feel-good, "aren't the good guys just swell" episode. I'm okay with that; I see enough examples of the waste that humanity has to offer on a daily basis that I don't really need my televised entertainment to constantly remind me that humanity is kind of filled with scumbags. This episode does kind of remind me of a "chinese proverb" (a quick google search has it attributed to Korean, Vietnamese, and Papal sources as well) that I've heard a number of times from different sources. See, in hell, people are sitting around a round table/pot of noodles/whatever but cannot feed themselves because they have meter-long chopsticks, so they are miserable and starving all the time. But in heaven, no one goes hungry because everyone feeds each other out of kindness and goodwill.

That story has bothered me since the day I heard it. So what's the moral, that only smart people go to heaven? That dilemma's not being solved with goodness of the soul, it is being solved with cunning. I've known plenty of unscrupulous smart people who are good at solving riddles. Anyone who works together for mutual gain can be more effective, and people who don't have prime directives to follow are significantly more dangerous in groups. And don't even get me started on the one where a guy goes to a job interview over breakfast/lunch/dinner and doesn't get hired because he salts/peppers/mayonnaises his food before tasting it. That doesn't tell the interviewer anything about the guy's competence - heck, you could just as easily twist it the other way and say that he's a man who happens to know what he likes!

Okay, I guess I did get started on it. Why didn't you stop me? Anyways, this episode actually does a decent job of avoiding the trite pitfalls of those parables; the bad guys do learn from the alliance's successes and start teaming up. And Janeway, she even admits that she made a mistake! That's the third time in seven years! And the writers don't just use it as an opportunity to show that she was right all along. Sure, the alliance gets out of the void, but for all we know the bad guy alliance is soon to follow. We even know that they have the tools at their disposal because that one guy Janeway kicked out of the alliance had access to a critical component. I also really appreciated that the two good guys with screen time were both from one-off quasi-villain factions - and the potato guys from Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy were even still good at that espionage stuff that they were good at in their one episode. Good attention to detail.

There's kind of a C-plot with aliens who are "native" to the void. Native to an area of space with absolutely no matter in it? Reminds me of the guys from the previous "area of space with no stars in it" episode, Night. These two episodes actually start from a pretty similar place: a completely silly void space zone with aliens that are somehow native to it. But while Night filled itself with boring villains and bizarre Janeway behavior, this one has an interesting plot about cooperation and maintaining one's principles. And the aliens, they're pretty cool. They don't respond to spoken language, but the Doctor discovers that they can hear when they respond positively to his opera music. Since I guess they don't respond to the nuances of consonants and vowel variations on sounds, he finds a way to communicate with them through the tone frequencies of music. They end up huddled in groups with chirping padds, conversing in eerie-sounding electronic music. Just a fun idea. I don't know that it could have carried a whole episode, but it was perfect as a flavor element here.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: The message is somewhat sappy, but avoids being overly saccharine when it counts. Interesting players and cool ideas keep this episode running.

S7 E11: Shattered

Chakoty is injured in an accident in engineering that shatters the ship into 37 distinct timelines. He wakes up in sickbay, where the Doctor is complaining that no one appreciates him. That's nothing new, but what is strange is that the Doctor has never heard of the mobile emitter. Chakotay goes to the bridge, but passes through a field and emerges into a time before the Caretaker incident. After escaping from a Janeway that distrusts him, he discovers that he has been made immune to the fields by a treatment that the Doctor had given him, and innoculates her as well. The two explore the ship in an attempt to reverse the damage. They get help from adult versions of Naomi and Icheb in astrometrics, maquis Torres in the transporter room, and watch Tuvok die with Neelix and Paris in a mess hall in the normal timeline. The episode ends with a rousing finale of everyone coming together to overcome Seska and the Kazons (band name!) in engineering.

At first glance, this episode feels pretty similar to Relativity, another episode that looks back at different parts of Voyager's past. Once again, the central character must gain the trust of a Janeway who is not inclined to help and work together to restore the timeline. This particular story is unburdened by the bizzare time-travel inconsistencies of Relativity; in fact, the show is pretty consistent about the arbitrary time-travel rules it sets forth. Other than being able to see back through a field only if you're innoculated, it plays by its own rules, and that counts for a lot.

But what really makes this one a winner is that it is exactly the kind of fun episode I'd like to see in the last season of a show. Up until now, the seventh season has really felt like business as usual; like it is senior year, and the writers all have senioritis and can't be bothered to come up with anything new. This episode is different - it feels like senior year, but for the crew instead. It is a fond remembrance of the past seven years, both the good (Seska) and the bad (the Macrovirus), but it doesn't pull any punches either. Past Janeway looks at the future she has wrought with horror, and while Chakotay reassures her, that gives this episode less of the smug self-congratulatory dialogue that other reminiscences in this show have had. This is absolutely what I want more of; Voyager, you've got a little more than half a season left, make the most of it. Your characters should be comfortable with each other - allow them to be the way you did here.

Watching this show with the knowledge that Seven will end up with Chakotay has been weird. I know I've been saying that for several seasons now, but here we are in the eleventh episode of the last season, and we're still getting Janeway/Chakotay teasing. With the knowledge that I have of how things turn out, I can see that the writers were actually trying here to make it clear that a romance won't happen; but their interactions here (particularly the one where season one Janeway explicitly asks Chakotay if they ever got together) show more chemistry between them than there has ever been yet between Seven and Chakotay.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: This is definitely the best of the Voyager fun episodes. I usually stick those at 4/5, but this one had it all; a balanced look back, good character interaction, and an exciting ending.

S7 E01: Unimatrix Zero, Part II

Assimilated Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok succeed in spreading the virus through the weighted companion cube central plexus, but are captured when Tuvok is overcome by the collective. The Borg Queen attempts to force Janeway to give up by destroying whole cubes in order to eliminate the few infected drones aboard each one, but gets nowhere. Instead, she develops a counter-virus that will kill all the drones affected by the mutation, but the only way she can spread it is through Unimatrix Zero. Voyager works with the freed drones to disable Unimatrix Zero, leaving them unable to communicate with each other, but safe from the Queen. A sphere that has been taken over by the rebellion assists Voyager in freeing their captured crew members.

It seemed odd to me that the away team wouldn't have just infected themselves with the virus from the start, since that would have protected them from the Queen's influence. I suppose that maybe the virus only works for those drones who have the mutation, and since no one seems to know what that even means (hardware, software, biological, mechanical, etc) they couldn't count on using it to their advantage. Plus, it gave the writers another chance for Tuvok to be the weakest link, which they seem to love; his conversion seems to be the only plot reason for not using the virus in that way. It is also strange that, while the drones are no longer connected to the collective, they are still connected to Unimatrix Zero. That makes the virtual reality into some kind of long-distance telepathy, but I never really liked it anyways, and I'm just thrilled that the solution to this episode wasn't some sort of climactic battle in there.

As for the scenes between the Queen and Janeway... I sincerely hope that the Queen did not really believe that destroying cube after cube would in some way make Janeway reconsider. "So, my options are help you re-assimilate all the lost drones or watch you do my dirty work for me? Let me think about this for a while. No, keep blwoing up cubes in the meantime, it'll help me think." The insults that they hurl at each other sound like your average internet forum debate on creationism, by about page thirty when all the sane people have left and it is just two zealots saying the same thing over and over. Really, Janeway, you think that the Queen is genuinely afraid that a taste of individuality will win her over to your side? And Queen, do you really think Janeway would rather see the drones reassimilated than dead? To her, assimilation is worse than death.

Part of the problem here could be that, in between watching parts one and two, I played through Portal 2, and man, GLaDOS would have made such a better Borg Queen. Hard not to go into details without going into spoiler territory for Portal, but suffice it to say that they have a lot in common, except that GLaDOS is hilarious and awesome. The Queen isn't really Voyager's fault, but considering that the Borg are so much weaker in Voyager she does come across as being kind of pathetic.

The romance that made no sense in part I is back, but as long as you forget that part I happened, it is relatively benign here. The Doctor's scene with Seven is nice, and while it is consistent with a terrible episode, it is at least consistent, and not too uncomfortable. In the end, it is kind of a shame that we'll probably never see that guy again. Maybe we'll see the Klingon drone who comes to Voyager's aid again, I have intentionally not looked him up so that I can cling to that hope. Also, it was nice that they did kind of use Paris' promotion in this episode, if only to reinforce how much more appropriate a choice Kim would be for a promotion.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: While, yes, I'm going to try not to get too snarky, this simply wasn't a very engaging episode. I've seen them in Voyager, plenty of them, but this just wasn't one of them. It was, however, an improvement over the first part, so that's worth a 3.

S6 E20: Good Shepherd

Three misfits have been identified by Seven through a ship-wide efficiency analysis, and Janeway makes it her goal to make sure they become functional, happy members of the Voyager crew. She takes them on their first away mission: a routine Delta Flyer survey mission. Of course, what makes it routine is that everything goes wrong and everyone almost dies. There's some (more) dark matter nonsense but by the end everyone is fixed by Janeway and lives happily ever after.

As this love letter to Janeway got underway, I was certain that Jeri Taylor, queen of the Janeway fan club, would have some share of the writing credits here. To my surprise, it was just Dianna Gitto, with some teleplay assistance from Joe Menosky (one of the more consistent Voyager writers). Memory alpha didn't have any more information on her, she's never written anything else in the history of recorded visual media, and I abandoned a google search on her name nine pages in after all that produced were tons of automatically generated pages and enough Voyager episode reviews to make me feel generally unimportant. Fortunately, no one else disliked this episode as much as I did, so I guess I've got that going for me. Anyways, I have no more information on this Gitto character than I started out with, but at least I'll never have to watch anything she's written ever again.

This episode takes the "Janeway knows best" theme, clones it enough times to make an army, and invades your home town with it, killing everyone you've ever loved despite your home town's complete lack of strategic importance. Well, unless you grew up somewhere strategically important. That's not the point. Janeway has every single answer ever here. No, Chakotay, she can't simply leave these people who would have washed out of Starfleet be, she must bend them to her will and make them love her. No, guy with five advanced degrees in theoretical cosmology, of course Janeway knows more about that than you do. Person with no self-confidence, Janeway will find that one good quality about you that will make it not matter that you constantly make mistakes in your work. And you, hypochondriac? I guess you could say that she just got lucky that the alien that burrowed inside you happened to cure you, but you know she planned it that way all along.

It doesn't help that these unknowns that surround her for the episode are caricatures of caricatures. It isn't enough to have one advanced degree in theoretical cosmology, of course he has to have five. And he has to show how much more interested he is in his research than he is in being on a starship in the great unknown by also being a complete jerk all the time to everyone forever. You bet that his one interest informs every single interaction he has with anyone else. The other two aren't any better; the cowardly lion no-self-confidence girl not only has no confidence in anything, but she also doesn't seem to know anything until Janeway happens to be there to appreciate that one time that she knew a thing. And the hypochondriac, we never even find out what his role is on the ship. He even only comes up in Seven's efficiency analysis as a detriment to the Doctor's department because he constantly wasting the Doctor's time. None of them really matter though; Mortimer Harren, Tal Celes, William Tefler, they all exist solely to elevate Captain Kathryn Janeway.

That does leave two things undiscussed: Dark Matter is back as a meaningless buzzword after its abuse in One Small Step, and Tom Morello, the lead guitarist from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, makes a cameo appearance. I always feel bad for the celebrity Trek fans, who are so eager to go on Trek and finally get to use their fame to live their dream, but then they get stuck in an episode like this one. As for the bad science? Well, it's bad, I guess I should be used to that by now. But there was some more bad science when they start discussing a stellar nursery, and I think, because my wife knows that sort of stuff because of her job, the inaccuracies may have given her a seizure. I guess it would be my job to diagnose that, but there was no postictal phase, so maybe it was just a fit of uncontrollable rage.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: I can't really see how this vapid plot would even please a staunch Janeway fan. But I guess there's a reason why creationists would go to a creationist museum, and it isn't for the purpose of hearing scientifically rigorous debate.

S6 E19: Child's Play

Icheb, the eldest of the Borg children, has just begun to fit in when Voyager finds his homeworld - and his parents. He's not excited about returning to people he doesn't remember, but Seven is even less excited. She has become attached to him, but is also concerned for his safety on an agrarian world that is the site of frequent Borg raids. Janeway convinces her to give the parents a chance, and they win Icheb over. After Voyager leaves, Seven discovers some inconsistencies in the father's story; but when they return to ask more questions, Icheb has already been sent away. You see, Icheb himself was genetically designed to be the biological weapon that infected the Borg cube that he was found on. Voyager rescues him from the sphere he'd been sent to destroy, and he happily remains with the crew.

Normally, I'd pan an episode (or at least whine about it) for focusing on a minor character rather than spending time on one of the underused major characters, but I think it works here. Any time that a major character has a chance to leave, particularly mid season, it is very hard to take seriously (see, for example, Virtuoso). But Icheb occupies a plot space between major character and background nobody where he could actually leave the show, and it would kind of matter. Additionally, the episode does a good job of tying his departure emotionally to Seven, so it doesn't just matter to Icheb what Icheb does.

Of course, Icheb's choice and Seven's mixed feelings open us up for one of those miserable Seven-Janeway debates. You know the ones I'm talking about: Janeway behaves condescendingly towards Seven, makes arguments that boil down to "I'm Janeway and I know what's best" and/or "individuality is the best because it is awesome." Other than the one from Latent Image, these debates have consistently been the conversations most devoid of intellectual merit on the entire show - made worse by Janeway's ability to always be right (again, except in Latent Image), meaning that everything Seven says will be thrown in her face by the end of the episode. To this episode's credit, some of Janeway's arguments aren't exclusively tautological, and Seven displays some excellent emotional maturity in her ability to recognize her own bias, so I'll give this part some leeway.

Icheb's dad is played by Mark Sheppard (Badger from Firefly, Romo "that lawyer guy" Lampkin from BSG), and boy is it weird to hear him without a cockney accent. In general, Icheb's parents do a good job of making the "boy, we sure wish you remembered us" scenes not that awkward. The process by which he becomes more enamored of leaving Voyager and the astrophysics that he loves, and begins to see a life for himself with his parents feels natural, but somewhat rushed. I was enjoying the episode well enough up until the 28 minute mark where they leave Icheb on the planet and you know something is going to go wrong. You know that all the subtleties of Icheb's choice are going to go out the window and we're going to find the dirty secret.

Then I started thinking about how the conflict is kind of contrived to begin with. I mean, Borg engaging in raiding tactics? When, in the Voyager Borg cannon, have we heard of the Borg just taking what they want and leaving - essentially farming a society for technological advancements and going back to harvest periodically. Actually, now that I think about it, for the Voyager Borg, who don't develop new technology, this is a pretty great scheme. Keep the smart people unassimilated and just harvest their idea crops from time to time. I'm of two minds on the ending too. Icheb being the biological weapon that infected his ship, that's a pretty interesting idea, even if it undermines the whole first two thirds of the episode. But Voyager weaponized the pathogen in a couple of hours already, so the need to use a living, sentient host is kind of moot, but that is never addressed here. It all seems to be half-thought-out, and left me generally irritated.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: While it is generally a well-constructed frame of an episode, the details frustrated me more often than not. It isn't great, but it is never outright bad either, and it has good ideas but some of them feel accidental.

S6 E16: Collective

Paris, Neelix, Chakotay, and Kim are on a Delta Flyer Survey MissionTM when a Borg cube sneaks up on them and captures them. Voyager arrives late to the party, and sends Seven over to negotiate with the hive there, but it turns out that the hive is only composed of five premature drones. The ship had been infected with a pathogen that only affects cybernetic beings (perhaps the handiwork of the guys from Infinite Regress?), and now these "Borg kids" are the only ones left. While the Voyager crew attempts to mount a rescue effort, Seven meets with more success by appealing to the newfound individuality in these new drones. One of them, the leader, is aggressive and arrogant, but he is conveniently killed at the end. The four remaining kids join the Voyager crew.

At the rate that the Borg are experiencing malfunctions, it is becoming hard to consider them a threat anymore. I know that they have to water them down or they'd be too much of a threat for a lone Federation starship, but frankly I'd rather that the writers just use them more sparingly. Or, you know, get Voyager a cloaking device. That would be cool. There's no ill-advised treaty with the Romulans out here, and we've seen plenty of aliens with equivalent technologies lately. That'd be one way at least to keep the Borg around without neutering them completely.

So, while other characters have some activities to engage in, this is primarily another episode about Seven's quest for individuality and Janeway's quest to say "I told you so" to anything with a pulse (but mostly to Seven). There's the generic set up with Seven saying it wouldn't be possible to introduce individuality to the kids, and then Janeway smugly implying that Seven's too stupid to realize that she also happens to be a Borg drone who gained independence. And then Seven learning an important lesson about giving the kids a chance. The whole thing is so ham-fisted that I was bored throughout, watching the time on the DVD player.

The idea of Borg maturation chambers from Q Who is revisited here, but it feels out of place. In Q Who, when the Borg were more interested in assimilating technology than they were in assimilating people, baby Borg made sense as a means of reproduction. Why go through all the trouble of mass assimilation when you can catch a few important individuals and just compose the rest of your population with genetic engineering? The children here aren't test-tube babies though, they all seem to have been assimilated as children, and that doesn't really fit with the Borg philosophy of abandoning the weak or defective. In this very episode, the hive just abandons the children, ignoring their distress calls, but why assimilate them in the first place? When the Borg are focused on efficiency and perfection, this behavior doesn't make much sense.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: It's not really a bad or offensive episode, but it is completely predictable and unengaging.

Addendum: Chris reminded me that I did not mention the Borg baby that Seven rescues from the cube when its incubator malfunctions. He and Memory Alpha have informed me that we never see it again, so its only purpose is to be a prop for the Doctor to hold when he asks Janeway not to use the biological agent that they've harvested. It's kind of a cheap move, but it's hard to say that it is much different than Hugh's plot purpose in I, Borg. Again, a Federation crew has a weapon that can be used against the Borg; I guess the real distinction here is the paradox puzzle that Data and Geordi designed was intended to kill all Borg everywhere, whereas this one is of significantly smaller scale. I'd be interested to see if the weapon comes back, and if the debate about its use returns - Memory Alpha gave me no spoilers, so I'll just have to wait and see.

As for the baby, I'm okay with it not coming back. I'm comfortable assuming that they just kept it safe until they could find others of its species to hand it over to.

S6 E11: Fair Haven

Paris has recreated an Irish village as the latest holodeck vacation spot for the crew - you can tell it is Ireland right away because every single extra on the streets has red hair. Janeway begins falling for the roguish bartender, and then starts modifying his program to suit her needs. Once she has sex with him she starts feeling guilty about it, and abandons him, but since the whole crew uses the program it is constantly running and the guy goes nuts and spills the beans for the crew. Then a magical space phenomena that Voyager had to ride out rather than avoid destabilizes the program, and it must be shut down for six weeks, so Janeway says her goodbyes to him, but says maybe she'd see him in six weeks.

I do have two nice things to say about this episode. One: it is a holodeck story that is not a holodeck malfunction story. Sure, parts of the program are lost at the end, but the central conflict of the story is not entirely based on a piece of luxury equipment going haywire; it is instead about a crew member going haywire. That at least is the foundation for a better story; we explore what the character's personal reaction is to the holodeck, and that gives us a good opportunity for character growth. It is squandered of course, but the idea started in the right place.

Number two is the Doctor's conversation with Janeway about her experiences. It is not preachy (despite his priest's garb), and covers a number of important holodeck and Janeway-related issues. He raises a good point that Janeway's by-the-book nature does exclude her from forming romantic relationships from the crew, and though he doesn't state this explicitly, if she's going around looking for romance from the alien-a-week people then she's bound to enter into a conflict of interest that way, so a hologram may be her best choice for romantic release. Her concern is about being able to just alter her boyfriend to her liking, to the point that he is better than life - and to Janeway, there's really no good reason to be that happy. I guess Rimmer is to Red Dwarf as Janeway is to Voyager.

This episode feels strange following on the heels of Pathfinder, a re-exploration of Barclay's holo-addiction. Holodecks definitely do have the potential to make real life... obsolete, which Barclay would be the first to tell us. As much as I appreciate the Doctor's sentiment in his plea that Janeway consider having some fun, I do think that the threat of convincing virtual realities as a replacement for life (that is captured perfectly in Red Dwarf) is something to be genuinely concerned about.

But here's the real problem with this episode: it is another run of the mill love story that builds way too slowly - it's even run of the mill for a holodeck love story. At least Harry Kim's holodeck love story (Alter Ego) had another angle to it, and twisted into a tale about Tuvok's loneliness. There's just nothing going on here. I don't even particularly like the setting. The Talaxian resort program, I think that's probably my favorite group holodeck destination so far - everything else has seemed to tailored to (or by) one or two crew members. To Neelix's credit, he tried to pick something everyone would like, and when people wanted to make additions, he was okay with it (even back when he was awful). Fair Haven doesn't seem like the kind of place that would exert the draw on the crew that the writers want us to believe it does.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: It's not just a love story, it's not just a holodeck love story, it is a Janeway holodeck love story.

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 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 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.

S4 E21: The Omega Directive

Voyager drops out of warp automatically when it encounters a shock wave. This wave has awakened a top-secret Starfleet protocol, and all of the screens on the bridge are now covered with the greek letter Omega. Janeway knows what's up, but keeps the crew in the dark while she has them develop specific types of shielding and warheads. However, she briefs Seven on the Omega Directive, as she correctly assumes that the Borg are familiar with it through their past assimilation of Starfleet captains. In the past, Federation scientists had experimented with a molecule that could generate nearly unlimited energy - but was also extremely dangerous, as one mishap could destroy nearby subspace. Seven reveals that the Borg have also experimented with it, and view it as an embodiment of the perfection that they seek. She wants to harness it, but Janeway convinces her to help her destroy it in order to protect the whole quadrant. They find the source of the wave: a half-destroyed facility, which is housing a massive amount of omega particles. Voyager collects the particles to dispose of them safely, and give medical assistance to the survivors, but a fleet of ships begins chasing them, demanding to have their technology back. Seven is sorely tempted to disobey orders (again) and try to stabilize the particles, proceeds with dismantling them, even as they begin stabilizing before her eyes.

The writers' stated goal here was to give Seven a quasi-religious experience. To me, there's really got to be an element of faith, of belief in the absence of evidence to make something religious, and there's none of that here. The omega particle (or particle 010 as it is known to the Borg) is as real as a magical space molecule gets. While her interpretation of its significance is different from the Starfleet reaction, I don't think there's anything necessarily religious about it. That isn't to say that the episode is a failure; certainly the clash of ideology makes for some worthwhile viewing, but it makes the scene with the crucifix at the end a bit weird.

I am a little uncomfortable with this whole omega directive business; I don't really like the idea of the Federation behaving in such a shadowy manner, especially in terms of repressing scientific research. Of course, the omega particle is conceived in such a way as to make it so overwhelmingly dangerous that the directive does seem necessary. At the same time, I also wish they'd gone further with it. Just destroying the particles won't be enough - with the scientists and their equipment still around, they'll just make more, as Voyager has given them no reason not to. A real dilemma could have been made out of that problem, especially if Janeway couldn't convince them to stop building it - even after their accident, the researchers hardly seemed reticent. What would Janeway have to do to fulfill the directive, kill all the scientists working on it? That's a dilemma on the level of In the Pale Moonlight (DS9, Season 6). Instead, Voyager just sails on, since it isn't their problem anymore.

Prime directive power inflation in a big problem in Voyager in general, and while it was nice that some rule overrode it, it really didn't have to. I know Tuvok says that stealing the particles was a violation, but I can't see how. I mean, this is not a pre-warp civilization, and messing with a particle that could destroy the entire quadrant is in no way whatsoever an internal affair. I'm not talking loopholes here, these are fundamentals of the prime directive.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: This is a reasonably exciting episode, but a shift in the focus could have yielded such a superior product that I can't justifiably go above 3.

S4 E16: Prey

This episode starts with a pair of Hirogen chasing down an 8472 creature and mercilessly filling it with phaser fire. When Voyager finds their ship, it is in disarray - the 8472 (unlike the crew, I don't like saying the whole clunky phrase "species 8472 member" every time I need to refer to it) was more more powerful than the Hirogen realized. One of the Hirogen is still alive and is rescued and revived, but the 8472 thing begins to disrupt Voyager. It is attempting to open a portal to its home dimension, and Janeway is prepared to let it do so, but for some reason they have to hunt it down first. The Hirogen helps, but soon proves to be a liability, as he is only interested in killing the creature whose catch phase has been "The weak will perish" and wants to destroy all life in our galaxy. The thing is cornered and wounded and communicates its sob-story to the crew through Tuvok, but many Hirogen ships come to claim the beast. While Janeway would rather get everyone killed in an attempt to save a single-minded killing machine, Seven is more of a pragmatist and overrides her commands and beams the hunter and the 8472 over to a Hirogen ship. Janeway, enraged that she and her crew are still bound to this mortal coil, strips Seven of her duties so she can have some paid vacation time.

8472 was introduced as a new Big Bad by beating up on an old one: the Borg. When this episode opened with the new bad guys, the Hirogen, beating up an 8472, that induced an eye roll. What will the next bad guy do, show up with a ship that is covered in Hirogen corpses? It felt lazy. It isn't even a full season later. And if we're still close enough to see an 8472 straggler, why haven't we seen any Borg around? The next scene pulls back from the teaser's assertion that "Hirogen > 8472" but when an episode starts off by annoying me, it really has to work to pull itself out of a nose dive.

The conflict that this episode creates between Janeway and Seven does just the opposite. Seven opposes Janeway's plan to board the stranded Hirogen ship, and when nothing immediately goes wrong, Janeway turns to her and says something like "See? My plan worked out just fine!" Janeway seems to be physically incapable of not jumping on every "I told you so" moment that she possibly can. That tendency in itself is obnoxious, but is made worse by the writers making her (often nonsensical) choices "correct" by having a good outcome. I do appreciate that Seven's insubordinate actions are allowed to save the ship, but then I just had to endure more "Janeway preaching at Seven" time as a result. Instead of Seven overriding Janeway's orders, if she had followed them only to have something awful happen, that would have been genuinely brave on the part of the writers.

The question of punishment on Voyager is tricky, and the writers need to come up with a solution. There are some creative non-execution non-brig options out there, but "confined to quarters" is all they ever seem to come up with. As a punishment, that's pretty weak - "Hey, you committed mutiny against me... have some time to relax with a good book without anyone making you do any work." Now, for the starfleet officers, I can buy that as good enough - they have status to lose. But they're not typically the ones to act up. I know that there's no Maquis conflict anymore, but I think that a large part of that conflict's absence is because the writers couldn't decide how to punish them. Now we've got Seven, and she's all over the place from episode to episode. I somehow doubt we'll get a suitable resolution to her integration, just like we didn't get one for the Maquis - one day, she'll just fit in, and the writers won't look back until they have no ideas for a story and have to rework an unused fourth season story.

Worst of all, this episode is a complete waste of Tony Todd, who has played both Kurn and old Jake Sisko. Not much is demanded of the Hirogen that he plays in this episode in terms of acting. He's just a simple by-the-book all-Hirogens-are-for-the-hunt guy. If you're going to call in a big gun veteran Trek actor, use him for some other reason than just because he's tall. With all this awfulness surrounding him in this episode, he just doesn't get a chance to shine. I've mentioned before that I'd like Voyager to make some friends some time, and while it doesn't have to be the Hirogen, it'd be nice if they could have found any common ground at all with this individual. However, he isn't written as an individual, but as a caricature of a one-dimensional culture.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: I try to be generous with my ratings, but I've noticed a pattern. Even in the 4s and 5s, there are often (typically Janeway-related) elements that annoy me but aren't enough to spoil the whole episode's score. However, those annoyances build up, and when I get to an episode that rubs me the wrong way, it just can't seem to get anything right. Put this episode in the first half of season 2 and it would have been an easy 2/5, or possibly even higher. But the element that it chose to focus on, the Janeway/Seven relationship, has been so wretched that I was just seeing red the whole time.

S4 E11: Concerning Flight

While Janeway is in her Leonardo's workshop holodeck program, the ship is attacked by technology thieves. The main computer core, the doctor's mobile emitter and various other pieces of equipment are teleported out of the ship - as well as the da Vinci hologram. Voyager tracks the equipment to a haven for stolen goods, and Janeway and Tuvok work with da Vinci, who is running about using the mobile emitter, to resteal that which had been taken from them.

Most of this episode feels like a pretty contrived excuse to run around with Leonardo da Vinci, which isn't so bad because who doesn't want an excuse to have more John Rhys-Davies? It's interesting; the author of the story, Joe Menosky, was adamant that the manner in which da Vinci gets put in the mobile emitter shouldn't be terribly important, but he was overruled by the writing team. I can see his point: much of the episode feels hijacked by the technology thievery story, which wasn't what he wanted to write about - and it probably feels that way because he didn't want to write about it. The whole mugging storyline doesn't have much weight to it, but I do agree that there needed to be a good reason for da Vinci to be in the emitter (or the story would have been flimsy in a "but why is this happening??" sense) and it does add a decent adventure element to the show.

The other reason I'm somewhat glad that the story gets hijacked is that I didn't get much out of the da Vinci storyline either. He's not a self-aware hologram, so he is forced to interpret his surroundings in terms of his programming, which gets kind of annoying. Additionally, I'm generally not a fan of the "historical figure holograms" - if a computer program can effectively reproduce the ingenuity, imagination, and creativity of the great minds of humanity, then why do we have humans anymore? I'm not saying I don't think computers will ever get to that point (though it will certainly be a long time from the present day), but if the conceit is that they are capable of that kind of modeling in the Trek universe, why bother sending even above average humans to represent us?

There is one da Vinci scene that makes it worth it to me. When Janeway asks him to abandon his "patron" (his interpretation of the guy who stole all the stuff), he delivers an excellent speech asking "when are we really free?" For some reason, memory alpha's contributors didn't think it was an important quote so I don't have the exact wording, but he makes well-reasoned point about choosing the lesser evil. Who can really say that they don't have to answer to someone? If you can find a situation where you have enough freedom to be comfortable, to do 90% of what you want to do, maybe that isn't so bad. The story eventually decides that it is better to be on the run and jump off a cliff on an untested glider while people are firing phasers at you, but I'm thinking that there's a middle ground. That you can strive for more than 90% without necessarily engaging in rebellion.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Decent adventure, and a thoughtful idea that I don't quite agree with.

S4 E01: Scorpion, Part II

On the run from species 8472, Janeway asks Tuvok to join her on the Borg cube so that he can help her develop weapons. When the Borg attempt to induct them (temporarily) into the hive, because verbal communication is limited, Janeway wheels and deals her way out of it by asking for an appointed representative. Thus, Seven of Nine joins the show. 8472 catches up with the two ships and, because the Borg view themselves to be more expendable than Voyager, they sacrifice the cube to destroy the lone 8472 ship - but not before beaming over a boarding party to assimilate a cargo bay. Janeway is injured in this maneuver, and tells Chakotay to make this alliance work, whatever the cost, before slipping into a coma. Seven starts playing hardball with Chakotay, insisting that they turn back; Chakotay fights back by ordering the ship to the nearest habitable planet where they can drop the Borg off. Seven leads the Borg in an attempt to throw the Voyager through a singularity into 8472 space, and while all the Borg but here are vented into space by Chakotay, she succeeds. Now in the "fluidic space" that 8472 inhabits, Janeway wakes up and gets all self-righteous on Chakotay for not getting them all assimilated. Chakotay points out that every Borg ever (in Voyager) has been all deception all the time, and look, they even were the ones to originally open the doors to 8472's realm in the first place. Janeway says that they shouldn't fight, and that even though really he started it they should call a truce long enough to fix this mess they're in. With the willpower of a thousand suns, Chakotay manages not to roll his eyes, and agrees. The crew perfects the weapons and they blow up a bunch of ships, then return to Borg space and blow up another large batch before 8472 retreats. Seven attempts to wrest control of the ship again, but Janeway and Chakotay are ready for her and link Chakotay into the hive mind long enough to distract Seven from their (successful) attempt to sever her from the collective.

Right when we first meet Seven, in her very first line, she uses the first person singular ("I") pronoun, something that the Borg are pretty infamous for not doing. Of course, two of the three (sounds like a Borg name) Borg who have done so in the past were the Queen and Locutus, the latter being exactly the kind of representative that Janeway had been asking for. However, the writers then make the choice to have her refer to herself in the third person for the rest of the episode ("this drone"). It's not necessarily a bad thing for her to use "I", but I think it would have been more powerful to save that for later on, only after she has been severed from the collective, especially if they're going to waffle on it and only use it once.

As you may have been able to tell from my recap's tone, I am still very displeased with the Janeway-Chakotay conflict. Seriously, up until now, Janeway has had a model Federation citizen for a first officer (as much as that conflicts with his back-story) - and I'm not even convinced that he was really in the wrong here. Since the Borg were betraying everyone and everything, weasel-wording their way through the agreement already, Chakotay's actions could easily be seen as attempting to drive a hard bargain, or simply trying to appear to the Borg as if he were as resolute as they were. And the resolution, an attempt from the writers to make Janeway look like the bigger person, makes me support Chakotay in this conflict even more.

I don't want to rehash my whole thing from Real Life about professionalism, but I will say this: while having the whole crew of TNG behave like idealized adults may not have been accurate, and may have given me unreasonable expectations for ordinary human interactions, it (and TOS and DS9) are alone (together) in a vast sea of television shows populated with people who do not possess significant emotional maturity. There is room on air for both points of view, but Trek is one of the few places I can go to watch people not be petty towards each other. I wish that Voyager could be one of those places, but that does not appear to be in the writers' plan.

While I'm also disappointed in general with the level of deceit that the Borg have developed in Voyager, I was very pleased with the cube's sacrifice. It was the perfect move for a species of expendable drones, working for the greater good. Seven of Nine's delivery was dripping with disdain, unlike TNG Borg (who deadpan everything) or the First Contact Queen (who seems to prefer to revel in her superiority), but the content is all pretty classicly Borg.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: This episode featured the Janeway/Chakotay conflict more centrally, and its score suffered accordingly. Season to taste with a mixed bag of Borg elements and voila!, you have Scorpion, Part II.

S3 E26: Scorpion, Part I

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

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

"We do now."

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

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

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

Watchability: 3/5

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

S3 E15: Coda

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watchability: 4/5

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

S3 E12: Macrocosm

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

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

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

Watchability: 3/5

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

S3 E11: The Q and the Grey

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

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

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

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

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

Watchability: 3/5

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

S3 E07: Sacred Ground

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

*Deep Breath*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watchability: 0/5

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

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

S2 E25: Resolutions

Plot 1: Janeway and Chakotay have contracted an incurable disease, which will only lay dormant if they stay on the planet where they contracted it. Janeway orders Tuvok (who is now in command) to quarantine them there, since the Doctor can't come up with a cure, and continue home without them. She takes enough research equipment to focus on finding a cure day and night, while Chakotay sets about making a life for them there. When a plasma storm destroys all her research, she is forced to come to terms with her new life there, and she and Chakotay discuss what direction their relationship might take. Oh, and she makes friends with a monkey.

It is hard not to look at Janeway and Chakotay in terms of Roslin and Adama (from Battlestar). They're both leaders with difference spheres of influence who followed very different paths to the predicament in which they've found themselves. In both cases, a relationship would be very unprofessional, but they are in situations where standards for professionalism are set by them. I could fill pages (and probably will at some point) about the ways in which Battlestar is "Voyager done right," but now's not the time. Suffice it to say, it takes effort for me to not judge things in Voyager as bad because they did something similar in an awesome way in Battlestar, but as a separate entity.

Janeway and Chakotay, despite being awkward together, show more chemistry than I'd expect they would. Mulgrew gives some of her most natural acting in this episode, aside from the ridiculous pose she keeps taking when approaching the monkey. When she's not being the condescending captain, she's actually kind of likeable. The thing is, if the writers are going to do an episode like this so early on, they've got to have the courage to at least deal with the fallout. While I haven't seen most of the rest of the series directly, I do know that this relationship is simply dropped. It's a shame too, because the start it gets here makes it feel almost normal.

Plot 2: Even though Janeway had ordered Tuvok not to risk the ship and crew by asking the Vidiians for help with their medical problem, many crew members (led by Kim) object to that decision. Kim stops just short of organizing a rebellion against Tuvok, who eventually relents and agrees to meet with the Vidiians. The bad guys act like bad guys, but the Doctor's Vidiian girlfriend sneaks the cure to him, and then escape to go rescue Janeway and Chakotay.

I'm a little disappointed with Kim's behavior here, and also with Tuvok's leadership (he was better with the kids on that planet than he is with the crew), but more so I am disappointed with the Vidiians. This was their last chance. There are no more Vidiian episodes. Here they're just the Romulan stand-ins, springing an obvious trap. I mean, Kim made an excellent point, that Voyager has some very good bargaining chips, and even the gruesome Vidiians from their first appearance would have rather traded for what they want rather than fight for it. Just... disappointing.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: Even though the "resolutions" of this episode aren't built on later, it's still a decent show. Even though they leave the monkey behind.