S6 E23: Fury

Kes is back, and she is angry. She rams Voyager with her shuttle, beams aboard, blows up bulkheads in her wake, taps into the warp core (thereby zapping and killing Torres), and phases herself into the past. Once there, she incapacitates her past self and gets in touch with the Vidiians. Meanwhile, Tuvok is having visions of the future, but is incapacitated before he can do anything. When the Vidiians catch up with Voyager, Janeway has put the pieces together, and subdues old Kes before she can run off with young Kes and return her to the Ocampan homeworld. Then she convinces young Kes to film a holographic plea for old Kes, so next time she visits Voyager in the future, Janeway can play that plea for her, and convince her that she doesn't actually want the Voyage crew dead. Instead, sad, old, broken Kes, miserable from her years of not being on Voyager sullenly gets back on her shuttle and heads for home.

As much as this is not really the capacity in which I had hoped Kes would return, I did greatly enjoy the visuals of the first five minutes of the episode. During that time, it isn't clear yet why she's angry, so I could just sit back and appreciate the wanton destruction. Maybe she was possessed, or incensed by some future Voyager action that hasn't happened yet. Either way, seeing her grimly stagger down the corridor with chunks of wall exploding behind her was pretty awesome.

My hopes were raised even higher when Tuvok got to be important to the plot due to his Vulcan mind stuff! It was going to be great! Tuvok was always the most compelling pairing with Kes, and he was going to be the one who figured out what was going on, who could reach out to her, who could bring her back to reality. Their chemistry was underused before, but now it was going to be different.

I was so naive back then. Of course he was going to be incapacitated and his hallucinations would only serve as breadcrumbs for the real hero, Janeway. Only Janeway could be smart enough to find the tachyons, only Janeway could resist Kes' mind bullets, only Janeway would have the strength to shoot her dead. Of course Janeway would be the one to talk her down the second time, not Tuvok or, god forbid, Neelix. You know, the two people who actually had strong connections with her.

Kes, underutilized, underappreciated, abandoned Kes. I do miss her, even though looking through the reviews with the Kes label doesn't turn up many high scores. And yeah, she's back, but most of this episode isn't even really Kes. This episode reminds me of a number of whedonesque themes, but this will contain major spoilers, so if you haven't watched Buffy, read no further. It reminds me of Buffy's return from death, where she's all shell-shocked, and unable to relate to those around her, unable to forgive them from returning her from heaven. That worked over the course of a series of episodes, finally culminating in the cathartic Once More, With Feeling, wherein her secret, her reason for hating her friends, is finally revealed. Kes' return is big, it deserves to be big, and the way it is dealt with here is small.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: This episode has piled up a number of negative reviews, and it is not hard to see why. Kes was reasonably well liked, and here, in her last appearance, she is just a shell of her former self. I don't mind emo Kes so much, but if the writers wanted to deal with her loss of innocence, it deserved more than just a five minute coda at the end of the episode. This episode's sin is not in its content (although that's pretty lame too), but in the lack of content.

S4 E02: The Gift

Kes, altered by her experiences with species 8472, begins exhibiting new telekinetic skills. At first, these new talents are an unequivocal asset, particularly in the case of her ability to destroy a harmful Borg implant in Seven of Nine using only her mind. Meanwhile, Janeway attempts to assimilate Seven into the crew, tasking her with helping Torres remove the Borg alterations to the ship. Seven promptly uses her newfound freedom to attempt to signal the Borg collective, but Kes detects her and stops her from several decks away. Kes' powers now begin to spiral out of control, and matter around her begins to destabilize, threatening the ship. She rushes to a shuttle, so as not to endanger the rest of the crew, and evaporates - but in doing so, slingshots Voyager and reduces their travel time by ten years.

Kes gets an opportunity to give her goodbyes to he closest friends on the ship, and Janeway, in this episode. We get one last meditation session with Tuvok; she and the Doctor spend some quality time in the lab; she and Janeway get all weepy reminiscing about the two whole scenes they had together in three full seasons; and we also finally get some closure on her relationship with Neelix. It's a little late, but it is nice and Neelix behaves surprisingly maturely. If, somehow, I didn't know Kes was leaving, these scenes broadcast it pretty clearly. As a main character send-off (which doesn't happen that often in Trek), it is nice, but bittersweet because the writers are giving up one one of the characters that they've successfully convinced me to care about. She's not leaving because her departure would add something dramatic to the story, she's leaving because (and I quote Rick Berman) "It's just that the character [of Kes] wasn't working for us. And we tried on a number of occasions to make the character work, and it didn't seem to be working."

What do we get in return? Seven plays the cold-turkey drug addict, angstful with the loss of the collective consciousness. Everyone has their own bone to pick with her, but Janeway in particular relishes this new opportunity to lecture someone about how awesome humanity is - to someone who has been a Borg for the vast majority of her life. I did really like one of Seven's retorts: "You will not assimilate me!", comparing Janeway's attempts to force individuality on her as analagous to the Borg forcing the collective on others. You know what? I'm with her. She's separate now, and still wants to go back; contrast with Picard, or even the former Borg in Unity. Sure, they wanted the hive mind part back, but had no desire to return to the collective. Sure, keeping her from joining is the wise tactical decision, but to pretend that you can remain on a moral high horse while doing it is a bit delusional.

At the end of this episode, they put her in the spandex uniform for the first time, the form-fitting silver one with ridges that point down to her crotch. It is absolutely obscene. You guys gave starfleet uniforms to the Maquis on day one of this trip... would it be so hard to do the same for her (and, honestly, Neelix for that matter)? I can't even fathom what mind can say "oh, it's a family show, so we can't have gay people, but we can totally have this woman with a uniform that would leave more to the imagination if it were painted on." Seriously.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: The Kes send-off is nice, but if Seven doesn't turn out to be more than a sock-puppet for Janeway's lectures, I'm going to become very bitter very fast.

S3 E21: Before and After

Kes wakes up in sickbay, very visibly aged and with total amnesia, amongst an Ocampan child and a fully-haired Doctor. She begins jumping backwards in time at irregular intervals, learning about her life in reverse-order; due to an experimental life-extending procedure, temporal radiation that Kes accrued at point in time that is after the present but before she reaches nine years old. On her trip, she gradually gathers the necessary information for stopping the process (which the Doctor manages to implement in the show's current time), but it does not work immediately, and she keeps jumping back until the point where she is a single cell splitting. For some reason, at that point she begins moving forward in time again until she is back at the present, and the Doctor finishes purging her of the radiation.

It's a bit bittersweet, watching this episode and knowing that Kes is leaving. It would have actually have been a decent send-off for her, chronicling events that could have happened if she had stuck around - and perhaps would have been more potent if she slipped through their fingers and became erased from the timeline (instead of hitting the reset button). Staying with Voyager would have indeed been the ultimate cause of her demise.

I am growing quite weary of major plot elements being resolved off-screen or accidentally. Here, it is Kes' loss of her memory of the present - she just miraculously gets it back when the radiation is gone. Not having any recognition of the characters around her as she goes backwards is a large part of what makes the plot work (or, at least, what makes the plot take a whole hour to resolve). It also continues a running alzheimer's theme in Voyager, one which I've praised on more than one occasion. To have her remember everything right away cheapens her experiences in the episode, all in the name of an easy to wrap-up ending.

The style of backwards time-shifting reminded me a great deal of a Sliders episode, which happens to be the result of both episodes drawing inspiration from the same idea. If you take time as a dimension, with properties similar to that of height, depth, and width, we seem to only travel one direction along that dimension, like a point that moves perpetually down an X-axis. In the Sliders episode, the group travels to a parallel earth where human perception is moving in the other direction. But since having the characters walk around in a world that is moving in reverse would be cost-prohibitive, that difference is expressed in discrete time-jumps, Kes-style, where the characters experience a chunk of time that moves in their own direction, then jump back to the next lump of time. I understand the technical and financial limitations that caused the writers of both shows to use that method, but the Sliders version has bothered me for a long time as not representing the fundamental idea very well - a disappointment that has seeped into my reaction to this episode.

One more thing: in my travels/research while working on this project, I've encountered the argument that having a nine-year-lifespan species is a bad idea - I disagree with that, but I'd expect more insect-like characteristics (frenzied bursts of activity, single-minded purpose, etc) out of such a character. More specifically I have seen arguments that, after it is established that Ocampans only give birth once per lifetime, the species would die out in a short set of generations. That would be true if they only gave birth to one child at a time, but it didn't seem like much of a stretch to assume that Ocampans would, as a result, give birth to whole litters at a time (despite only being equipped with two mammaries). I can only imagine that the writers received fan reactions to that effect, but here all the Ocampan births that are depicted here of single children. It's a small thing, but they had the chance to correct an internal consistency oversight and passed it up.

Watchability 3/5

Bottom Line: The last two episodes, while still arriving at the same score, took very different paths. Favorite Son didn't aspire to much, but stumbled into being more interesting than it was trying to be. This one aspired to much more, but came up quite short in too many ways for me.

S3 E18: Darkling

Voyager makes a stop at a planet to trade medical supplies for knowledge about the journey ahead with the local travelers. Kes, now separated from Neelix, begins a relationship with one of the natives, and starts questioning whether she should stay on Voyager. Meanwhile, the Doctor, experimenting with adding to his personality by incorporating traits from various notable historical characters, malfunctions and starts by trying to kill Kes' new friend. He moves on to torturing Torres, dissecting the holograms of the historical figures, abducting Kes, and trying to buy passage off the planet. Kes appeals to him to stop, but instead he throws them both off a cliff. Miraculously, the transporter beam that saves them also cures the Doctor.

I approve of the trading post, the insights we get into the culture of the travelers, and Voyager's mission here in general. These activities are what Voyager should be up to all the time, given their circumstances. Not that they need to show this kind of stop any more frequently than they are (or, at least, have done so this season), but it is a nice reinforcement of the life that a crew which is stranded in strange lands must be like.

I've often thought that, as a character with only nine years to live, Kes should be significantly more flighty. Her learning aptitude and thirst for discovery and novelty have satisfied that desire to an extent, but it seemed strange for her to want to be tied down with Neelix. That said, after the first two and a half seasons, the Neelix/Kes relationship deserved a bit more closure than the off-hand line here. Sure, I'm thrilled to avoid a four episode arc of Neelix going through a goth phase and moping around listening to Evanescence on his iPod, but those weren't the only two options out there. Yes, writers, I'm sure the focus groups told you how much they hated Parturition, but just dropping the couple is not the only way to solve the problem. This isn't just about character growth, it's about writer growth. If the writers don't learn how to write their way out of a bad relationship, I still won't trust them to make a new one.

Still, this direction is a better one for Kes, so I'm happy with that. I'd even have been happy for the whole episode to be based on that, instead of the Doctor-goes-psycho plot that we got instead. I love the Doctor, he's great at playing the Doctor, but I'm starting to realize that he doesn't have a whole lot of acting range. Sure, the new contacts make him look creepy, but instead of coming across as sadistic and amoral, he just looks like the Doctor acting goofy. The text-book Jekyll and Hyde madman stuff doesn't help by being really stale. I just rolled my eyes for the whole second half of the episode.

Watchability: 2/5

Bottom Line: It's actually pretty rare for the ending to be the worst part of the episode: usually, I struggle through the first 25 minutes for a chance to be rewarded for making it to the end. No luck here.

S3 E10: Warlord

Three survivors are beamed off an unidentified, exploding alien (Illari) ship, but one dies in sickbay shortly after arrival - while that would normally disqualify him as a survivor, there are some extenuating circumstances. Kes begins behaving oddly (including brutally dumping Neelix), and reveals that she is now possessed by the consciousness of the third survivor by murdering a crew member and a delegate from the Illari homeworld. Under the influence of this new [male Illari warlord's] mind, Kes' full powers are once again unlocked, and he/she quickly overthrows the Illari government and kills its leader. The first attempt to remove the new guy's identity fails, and Tuvok is captured and Kes/Tieran attempts to torture him - with little success. Kes and Tieran are fighting an internal battle, distracting him from the second attempt (an all-out assault), which is successful.

The possession of a main character with the mind of another person in order to give him or her a chance to act in a different role is a Trek trope as old as time, but it has produced some great results in the past, and I'm reasonably happy with what we've got here, too. In general, I haven't exactly been thrilled with Kes' acting so far (her character, on the other hand, has grown on me a lot), so I was pleased to see that she could handle her part in this episode well. In particular, her conflict with Tuvok was perfectly executed, with good back-and-forth and gripping performances that underscore the subtle but significant relationship between the two. I was also very happy with the illustration of the internal conflict, with Kes and Tieran arguing inside (her? his? their?) mind, Kes with her quarters in the background and Tieran backed by his portrait - until he starts losing and his background is replaced with her quarters.

The break-up of Neelix and Kes, before we know that she is possessed, is also powerful. She gives reasons that would have been perfectly good a season ago, reasons that I was practically shouting to her through the screen at the time, but now that Neelix has calmed down a lot I sorta feel bad for him. No, not just sorta - Kes is his life. As useless as Neelix is, as much of a chump as he can be, he is completely devoted to Kes - and while Kes' reasons are still solid, and Neelix probably couldn't really grow without losing her, I do genuinely feel bad for him. I was really surprised when the denouement of the episode focused only on Kes and Tuvok, without any sort of closure for Neelix. Did she really mean what she said while possessed? I'd like to know. While it is nothing short of a triumph to get me to want to hear more about Neelix and Kes' relationship, the ending feels pretty hollow as a result.

Any time Trek messes with gender roles, or, in this case, puts a male character in a female's body, it is hard not to think of one of the glaring omissions of Trek: the lack of homosexual characters. When, early in the possession, Kes almost (but not quite!) kisses Tieran's wife/girlfriend/whatever, I became very concerned that this was going to be one of those episodes where Trek kind of, but not really, apologizes for that inadequacy. I've gotten the impression from things I've read over the years (sorry, no quotes that I could find) that part of the problem is that Roddenberry himself was not terribly open-minded on the matter. But you know what, after The Original Series, I'm willing to give him a pass on that. It was unfortunate that the absence continued into TNG, but to still - throughout the course of all of TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise - be missing any gay or lesbian crew members is inexcusable. Oh, wait, Brannon Braga has prepared an excuse in an interview on the topic:

"I think it was, not so much a young man’s [issue], it was a syndicated family show, showing at six o’clock, you know, in Salt Lake City, so you had to deal with each separate affiliate rather than one network. And things like that."

Really? Do you even know what show it is that you wrote for? Do you have any idea who it is that you were writing for? You water down your science to the point that it isn't science anymore, and you won't touch on social commentary because it is too controversial? You had a duty as the bearer of the Trek torch. You know what? I'll let Picard tell you about it:

"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based! And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!"

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: My tangential rant aside, it was fun to see Kes tackle another acting style, and we got some good character scenes which built off of it.

S3 E04: The Swarm

A Plot: The Doctor (after learning to perform some opera) discovers that he is beginning to lose control of his faculties. This malfunction is a result of running the program for too long, which overloads his program with all the non-medical "irrelevancies" he has picked up over time. As his memory degrades, Kes and Torres work with a hologram of his creator, Lewis Zimmerman, to try to find a solution that won't mean a complete reset of the Doctor to his factory specs, without the memory and growth he had accrued in the last two years. The Zimmerman hologram makes a heroic sacrifice by attempting to blend his matrix with the Doctor's.

The Doctor's condition gives two metaphorical avenues for exploration. The first is that of the unsympathetic caregiver being turned into the patient. They've already touched on that in a B-plot before, and he's made progress with his bedside manner in episodes since then, so it is frustrating the way the writers make him regress in the beginning of the episode just to make this element "work." The other, more blunt use of this plot is as an Alzheimer's allegory. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have had the "what am I doing here and why can't I leave?" conversation with an Alzheimer's patient, so that certainly struck a chord. Additionally, Kes' heartbreak upon watching the Doctor lose the memories that made him the man who was her mentor is well-captured in that regard.

Early in the episode, The Doctor is completely resolute in his early decision to simply wipe his memory in order to stabilize his program, essentially citing "the good of the many" philosophy (though not directly). Instead, it is Kes who can't let go - the Doctor wouldn't have to live with his sacrifice, it'd be those that care about him that suffer the most - and that is true of Alzheimer's as well, in a way. The resolution is sneakily cathartic - the Doctor's memory appears to be wiped, until he begins to hum the operas from the beginning of the episode. This is a thread that deserves more screen time, with a gradual recovery, and it is a grave disappointment to me that it does not resurface in future episodes.

B Plot: Voyager encounters the territory of a reclusive, xenophobic group of aliens (again) that swarm intruders in a interlinked cloud of small ships, disabling and killing them. Janeway decides that the best course of action is to sneak through their territory instead of adding fifteen months to their journey by going around, even though, as Tuvok reminds her, those actions would be a violation of Federation protocol. Not surprisingly, they fail to sneak all the way through a territory so vast that it would take fifteen months at maximum warp to get around, and Voyager is beset upon by the swarm. At first, Voyager's weapons are useless, but then Janeway says some magic words and the weapons work great, and destroying one ship sends a chain reaction of destruction through the swarm. Voyager has successfully bullied its way through swarm space.

As you can probably tell from the tone of that recap, I was considerably frustrated by this part of the show. Janeway's stated rationale for sneaking? "We're a long way from Federation space." Really? Not only is that incredibly inconsistent with the most established parts of her character so far, but as justifications go, that one is very insubstantial. It isn't a "we're going to die if we don't do this" - and last time she used that one, we were treated to her saying "I told ya so" at length afterwards. I'm not even saying that sneaking through is necessarily the wrong choice: space is fraught with peril, there's no guarantee that going around would be any less dangerous - but her complete 180 on this issue is entirely out of the blue, and I need a better explanation. She's operating on the "it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission" principle here, and one of my favorite things about the Federation is that they give even their enemies the chance to be the bigger people. It is perhaps a naive faith in others that drives that approach, but I find it to be quintessentially Roddenberrian. If they'd have tried to go through without sneaking, and maybe even trying to solve the language barrier, they'd still probably have had a fight on their hands, but at least I could feel good about them as the representatives of the Federation in a foreign land.

Gripe number two comes from the solution. It is a common condemnation of Trek that "They just solve problems with technobabble. But in my favorite show, [diaries of teenage angst: the sequel], problems are solved by people." Now, first of all, that's really rarely true. I mean, just look at the A-plot for this episode: technobabble is used in the solution, but that jargon just allows for the heroic sacrifice of the Zimmerman hologram in order to save another being who was made by the same creator. But honestly? I'm okay with science solving problems. Because science solves problems. The thing is, there's just no science here. Janeway just says something like "remodulate the polarity" and everything is fine. Very unsatisfying, and it gives ammunition to people who don't like Trek.

Watchability: 3/5 (A Plot: 4/5, B Plot: 1/5)

Bottom Line: Voyager is starting to deserve the bad reputation that the Kazon have been giving them. The Doctor plot is compelling, but it is most unfortunate that it is never used again (though not the fault of this episode).

S2 E10: Cold Fire

I like the idea of Tuvok mentoring Kes in telepathic control. They're certainly an odd couple - Tuvok (really Vulcans in general) placing a premium on control and focus, and Kes being the more free-spirited type, prone to flights of fancy. It probably has something to do with the average ages of their respective species. When you can live for multiple hundreds of years, you've really got all the time in the world to do what you want - passions can wait. On the other hand, Ocampa, with their nine-year lifespan, must feel like they've got to experience everything at once. Both of these characters have been developed well with these things in mind, and I appreciate it.

And as it happens, we get to meet some different Ocampa in this episode. Voyager has been carrying around the corpse of the Caretaker this whole time, and sparks of life in it have led them to a new Caretaker-style array - inhabited by somewhat aggressive Ocampa. Under the tutelage of a more aggressive Caretaker (Suspiria), these Ocampa have extended their lifespans (up to 20 years) and their telepathic abilities. Extending the idea of Ocampans being more passionate as a result of their shorter lifespan, it is not the least bit surprising that you'd find some who are more hostile.

Their leader, Tanis, comes aboard and informs the crew that they've got a bad public image. Calamity follows in the wake of Voyager and word has gotten around. That's an interesting theme that is only touched on here, and I know it'll come back later, but I do want to say this: a lot of sci-fi series (both Battlestar and Babylon 5 come to mind here) have some very heavy-handed episodes about shady journalism and how it is bad, and I like that it is more subtle here. The themes are there, but we're not confronted directly with the sleazy reporters who turn innocents into villains, rather we see the end result of the "poor press" and dealing with the consequences.

Tanis takes over for Tuvok and shows Kes how to do some very powerful things with her abilities. He himself is pretty mustache-twirling, but that's par for the course with sci-fi telepaths. The Betazoids of Trek are pretty unique as a major telepathic race that doesn't go around abusing their power - and while I appreciate that, it's also a natural extension from the ability to see private thoughts to getting a smug sense of superiority. Kes later goes to practice her new skills with Tuvok, and he gets his face melted and practically dies as a result. The following scene in sickbay is perfect - Kes is mortified, Tuvok is stern but of course forgiving, and the Doctor is exasperated. I love the Doctor's disdain for Vulcans and what he views as their reckless use of their telepathic abilities. The idea that anyone could find a Vulcan to be reckless in any way is hilarious.

Voyager finds Suspiria with Tanis' help, but she's actually pretty bitter about the death of her mate. Earlier in the epsiode, when they are about to follow the energy that was activating the Caretaker's course, Tuvok suggests that they should devise a defense against the Caretaker's powerful abilites, so that they won't be as easily overpowered as they were before. It seemed a bit alarmist at the time (and even more surprising that Janeway gave it the go-ahead), but it turns out to be quite useful, as otherwise Suspiria would have just killed everyone. Janeway does give me a bit of the eye-rollery when she puts the crew back at the mercy of a grief-stricken, crazed, very powerful entity in order to earn its trust (after subduing it with a weapon specifically designed to fight its species), but at least the result is not a new friendship - instead, Suspiria flees.

Not surprisingly, Kes goes back to not having any control over her powers, restoring the status quo - much like River in several of the earlier Firefly episodes (prompting many "We know she can do [X], why doesn't she do that now??" exhortations over the series' short life). But she's still training with Tuvok, which I like, and I have hope we'll see more of it. Neelix also behaved well this episode - he did his over-protective thing, but to a reasonable extent, and seems to have packed away the jealousy thing for now.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: A welcome bit of continuity, some more good character growth from Kes, very solid episode. This kind of "really very good" episode teeters on the edge between 4 and 5 as a score, but it is such an upswing in quality I feel I have to reward it.

S2 E08: Persistence of Vision

Janeway's running around the ship biting everyone's head off, snapping left and right. I mean, if I micromanaged as much as she does, I'd probably burn out pretty fast too. Kim and Torres have rigged key areas of the ship to transmit the Doctor's signal, but there's a malfunction and the Doctor appears to be about a foot tall. Even from that height, he can tell that Janeway is acting unprofessionally, and pulls rank and orders her to neglect her duties go do her holodeck thing. She goes back to her holonovel, and it feels extra uncomfortable this time, like she's using it as porn. I guess anyone who has spent any time thinking about what people would really use a holodeck for have considered this... application, but I don't really want to see it.

Janeway is called out again to tend to her captainly duties, which includes preparing for meeting a reclusive, border-protecting faction and negotiating for passage through their territory. After speaking with them from long range, and being told that Voyager is to be evaluated in person, Janeway starts hallucinating about things from her holodeck program appearing in her real life. She slowly becomes a quivering wreck in sickbay, where Kes discovers that she can see and, in a limited way, interact with these hallucinations.

The aliens make second contact with the ship, and that's where things get interesting. Janeway seems to have temporarily broken her spell, but now other crew members are being affected all at once. One by one, each crew experiences a personal illusion, which absorbs them and puts them in a trance. Kim sees his girlfriend (thankfully we don't have to), Tuvok sees his wife and is transported back to Vulcan, Paris is berated by his stern admiral father. Some crew members takes longer than others, and it gets quite eerie as we see Torres and Janeway making their way past person after person who is just standing or sitting there, staring blankly. Eventually Torres succumbs to a fantasy where she is seduced by Chakotay. It is a little awkward, but I don't get the impression that she really pines for him, just that she sees him has a comforting figure who is also attractive. It works. Finally, Janeway is overcome by an illusion of her husband who is angry at her for cheating on him with the holodeck.

The Doctor, however, is immune (and back to normal size in sickbay). Going through person by person, you lose track of who is affected and who isn't, so when the attention finally turns to him, who hasn't been in the show since his scene in the beginning, it is a welcome break in the tension. Kes, too, is unaffected; even though she can see other people's hallucinations, hers don't affect her as much. The Doctor sends her down to sickbay, to finish setting up the disruption the rest of the crew is working on, and she experiences two hallucinations directed at her. The first is of Paris, wounded and in need of aid, but she reasons her way out and makes it to engineering. The second is Neelix, overbearing and protective, trying to "rescue" her from the ship. That doesn't work either, and he (well, the alien pretending to be him) tries a violent telepathic attack on her. She digs deep, with the Doctor's encouragement, and uses her latent telepathic powers to fend him off and save the crew.

The alien pulls a houdini and escapes. He seems to not be a member of the species that they had come out to meet, so we never find out what happens. Much like Conundrum (TNG), it is pretty unsettling that this guy was almost able to completely incapacitate the crew that easily; it makes you wonder why he doesn't control half the quadrant already. But also like Conundrum, this episode gives some great glances at what's going on in the character's heads (I would have loved to see what Chakotay was thinking of) that doesn't make it into dialogue. It would have been nice if maybe Chakotay's spiritualism could somehow save him, or if Vulcan mental dsicpline would have at least helped Tuvok last longer, but it still works.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: A moody and atmospheric episode, well done in many ways. Like many episodes I've watched so far, it was a slow-starter, but once it got going I had a great time.

S2 E04: Elogium

Neelix is back at it with his Paris-fueled jealousy/paranoia, and it is still grating. I had hoped that the writers had seen how un-endearing it was and dropped it, but no. Fortunately, we cut pretty early to the bridge, where they've found... another creature in space. Voyager seems to love space-borne lifeforms. This is what, the third already? I like the idea of life finding a way to flourish in space, but they hardly get into the science of it.

Instead it is mostly used as an excuse to have Kes go into heat! Great! She can only get pregnant once, and it got accelerated by the creatures! Now we can have a teen-pregnancy episode! I am so excited about this! Capping off a series of trite-to-the-point-of-painful scenes where Neelix isn't ready, Kes is ready, Neelix asks Tuvok for advice, Neelix is ready, Kes isn't ready, is a scene with Kes and the Doctor talk about what she should do which feels a little heartfelt and genuine. In between there are also some very awkward Chakotay/Janeway sequences. Should they allow sexing in the crew? No other Trek has cared about it, and they have extra reason to allow it here (being far from home) but they seem to think it is an issue. Although Chakotay starts dropping subtle hints that maybe Janeway should be making the sexy time with him, which is awful. You can do better, dude.

More space-borne lifeforms! Please! I'm very sorry about complaining about it, now that it is relegated to the B-plot. The little creatures begin attaching themselves to the Voyager, and then a big one shows up and starts being aggressive with the ship. Now even this part of the plot is about mating. Didn't TNG already do an episode about the ship being mistaken for a creature? At least Galaxy's Child didn't have the teen pregnancy bit, though the Geordi pining after Dr. Brahms parts were also pretty excruciating. Chakotay figures out that they should behave submissively to the creature, which works, and Janeway congratulates him (Not paraphrased)*: "In the future, if I have any questions about mating behavior, I'll know where to go." Bluh.

Solving the creature-problem also made Kes come out of heat. She can still have a baby later, but she learned an important lesson about responsibility, and so did Neelix (*groan*). Also, a crew member (Samantha Wildman's first appearance) is pregnant with her husband's child (the dad is back in the alpha quadrant), so Janeway decides magnanimously to allow it.

Watchability: 1/5

Bottom Line: Sure, Trek has more than its share of after-school-special episodes, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

*I figure, given the rate at which I paraphrase people, it's better if I just mark when I am actually quoting people.