Kes Evaluation

Cold Fire 5 Persistence of Vision 4 The Swarm 3 The Gift 3 Before and After 3 Warlord 3 Darkling 2 Elogium 1 Fury 1 Average Score 2.8

Kes Average End of Season Rank: 4.33 (5th place) Highest Rank: 3rd Lowest Rank: 6th

Seized Opportunities

As the only major character that was dropped from the series midway through, Kes is going to have fewer seized opportunities than missed ones. I still liked her, but there were a lot of places that the writers could have gone if they were more creative or less cowardly.

What did work about Kes were her superior character pairings. Take, for example, the Doctor – arrogant, a paragon of self-confidence, yet trapped in sickbay and respected by few. Kes, however, saw in him at least a glimmer of what he saw in himself, which kept his hope alive until he could get himself a mobile emitter. Or take Tuvok, whose personality was an opposite of Kes' – yet, unlike Neelix, she respected his wishes and world-view. She was unlike him, yet they had a fascinating telepathic mentorship together.

Speaking of mentoring, that's the other thing they did right with Kes. She was two years old, in a species that lives to nine, and if that species is every going to make much scientific progress, they'd better be fast learners. Kes was, and I appreciate that because most of the rest of her species' development was botched.

Missed Opportunities

So, yeah, I think the Ocampa were botched, but it's not the idea of a species that lives to nine years old that I have a problem with. In researching this project, I've encountered a surprising number of instances of people objecting simply to the idea of a short-lived species. Anyone who complains that that part doesn't make sense simply doesn't have any sort of imagination and I'm surprised that they've watched enough sci-fi to be complaining about Voyager. It is true that a species that only procreates once per lifetime and only makes one child per coupling is doomed to extinction, but that would be true regardless as to how long the members of the species lived. Ocampan procreation certainly is a problem with the species' concept, but it is unrelated to their lifespan.

The real problem is that Ocampan personalities were not imagined to be fundamentally different from human-life-lengthed Trek species. Take, for example, the Vulcans, the high-elves of Star Trek. It makes sense that the stoic, logic-bound species would have a significantly longer lifespan than humans – the closer you get to immortality, the less urgency, the less reckless ambition I imagine one would have in their life. I already mentioned that Kes was the opposite of Tuvok personality-wise, but they are weak opposites. Kes only lives nine years, she should be dialed up to eleven at all times. Maybe she never sleeps. Maybe she used to, until she got into Janeway's coffee supply.

Maybe she could have been the inversion of the old Trek space-sailor/womanizer trope. Bashir was a different kind of subversion, since his womanizing ways only earned him ridicule. Her long term relationship with Neelix never made much sense, along with the mate-once issue, and kept her from subverting the trope in a new and more brave way. Instead of being tied down with him, she could be subverting the double standard that sex is success for men but sex is sluttiness for women.

I've heard a number of stories about people who were on the early HIV meds, medications that made life miserable to live. Many of those stories end with the patients opting to stop taking the meds, knowing that they'd die sooner but they'd enjoy life more on the way out. That's what I wanted out of Kes, that sense of urgency. Some of it was there, but not enough for me.

The Actress

Jennifer Lien took some getting used to, but I think that has more to do with Bashir syndrome than anything. Alexander Siddig's first performances were terrible, a problem compounded by the fact that his character wasn't very likeable. Fortunately, he greatly improved as an actor as the series progressed – a chance that Lien was not afforded. She did improve over her three seasons, but it did help that the writers were slowly getting more comfortable with her character in general.

Final Thoughts

For the first season, Kes seemed to be just getting leftover Deanna Troi parts, and as a result, there was nothing really unique to her for a while. After stumbling in the beginning, the writers struggled with finding a groove for her, even though her options seemed fairly obvious. Right about at the end of season three, after yet another weak collection of twenty six loosely related episodes, knowing we were going to lose her, I felt as though her loss was the most damning failure of the Voyager writers. They were giving up because they were not creative enough and not brave enough. I guess I still feel that way. Fortunately, season four was a big improvement over the first three, so I managed to forget about that failure for a while.

B'Elanna Torres Evaluation

Barge of the Dead 5 Prototype 5 Lineage 4 Dreadnought 4 Blood Fever 4 Juggernaut 4 Revulsion 4 Prophecy 4 Remember 3 Extreme Risk 3 The Swarm 3 Faces 3 Drive 3 Muse 3 Parallax 3 Day of Honor 3 Average Score 3.6

B'Elanna Torres Average End of Season Rank: 3.86 (4th place) Highest Rank: 2nd Lowest Rank: 6th

Seized Opportunities

So, remember how half the crew was supposed to be from this Maquis ship? Torres does, and she's just about the only one. Chakotay certainly left his terrorist ways behind the second he came aboard. Several episodes used some background Maquis crew members who would only show up in that one episode; the only character I can think of that had any sort of adjustment time and some screen time after becoming a member of the crew is Hogan. Yes, Hogan, the guy who got eaten by a land eel.

Torres not only actually used the show's Maquis premise, she used it well. Many of the one-offs were just used as a vehicle to say how awesome the Starfleet way is, but Torres' plots were more complicated than that. A friend once asked me if I had a choice between an incompetent co-worker who was easy to get along with and a competent co-worker who was a complete jerk, which one I'd choose. It's an interesting dilemma – I think, at baseline, I'd rather take on more work myself than have to deal with someone I can't stand. Not everyone feels that way of course, and Torres is the captain of the opposite viewpoint. As I mentioned in the first season review, she's the Dilbert, only Klingon, abrasive, female, and a member of a terrorist organization. What's best is that, while the show doesn't always side against her, it also doesn't always side with her. That kind of balance is missing for other characters.

The show's maintenance of her outsider status also allowed her to have a real reaction to the death of all the Maquis in the alpha quadrant. That should have been a show-defining moment when that news got out, with half the crew learning that Voyager is more their home than anywhere in the alpha quadrant could be. It wasn't, for anyone who wasn't Torres at least. Torres couldn't completely save the lost opportunity for the rest of the crew, but her character did at least take full advantage of it.

Torres is the show's woman of two worlds in a lot more ways than Seven. She's half Klingon biologically, half Klingon culturally, a Maquis crew member with some Starfleet Academy experience, an engineer and a warrior, independent and with child. Each conflict gets at least one full episode dedicated to it, so they are neither overdone nor underexplored. Torres' complexity makes her the show's character who was most capable of surprising me without doing something that seems out of character.

Missed Opportunities

Here's Torres' biggest weakness – she was the biggest offender in the crew when it comes to the Voyager style “two steps backwards, one step forwards” character development. She was constantly making progress by the end of an episode only to have all of her development erased for the next one. If there is one saving grace for this annoyance it is that each one of the episodes centered on her did take her in a slightly different direction, which kept her character somewhat fresh.

Every episode other than every episode with her relationship with Paris, that is. Every scene with those two was the same note, played over and over again. “They fight all the time, but they still looooove each other!!” See, there are several interesting dysfunctional relationships in sci-fi (most of them in Galactica), but even Saul and Ellen Tigh were happy together sometimes. Even though Lee never really loved Dee back, there were some good times in their marriage. Paris and Torres are never happy together except for 30 seconds at the end of the episode and that one time in Thirty Days.

The Actress

Honestly, I never really thought about the job Roxanne Dawson was doing as an actress during the run of the series, which is probably a good thing. If I'm not thinking about the person who is playing a character that I'm watching, they must be doing a good job, right? Well, she was never given much of a challenge in her role here – regardless as to what's going on, Torres acts like Torres. In her later, more demanding performances (I'm thinking particularly of Lineage here), she certainly acts circles around Duncan-MacNeil, but that's like saying a person using a spoon won a soup-eating competition against a person using a chopstick. I guess what I'm saying is, she could be awesome, and she played one of the more interesting characters on the show, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I'd be interested to see her in some other show, playing a different type of character.

Final Thoughts

There are no flat-out bad Torres episodes. She is the only character who doesn't have a single episode below a three, and one of two not to have one below a two. I was consistently impressed with the stories she was in, and her unique personal reactions to the events in those stories. The show was balanced in its approach to her, and that payed out big in the end. I'd easily place Torres as at least my third favorite character, and she gave Seven a serious run for her money for second place.

Tuvok Evaluation

Meld 4 Random Thoughts 4 Riddles 4 Flashback 4 Innocence 4 Ex Post Facto 4 Alter Ego 3 Resolutions 3 Prime Factors 2 Learning Curve 2 Gravity 2 Repression 2 Rise 2 Average Score 3.1

Tuvok Average End of Season Rank: 3.57 (3rd place) Highest Rank: 1st Lowest Rank: 7th

Seized Opportunities

When I first heard that the tactical officer for Voyager was going to be a Vulcan, I thought it made no sense. Coming from a frame of reference where the optimal security chief is a war-thirsty Klingon, I had no idea how the writers could possibly justify giving that role to a Vulcan. But they framed it well: like Odo, Tuvok also approaches the job from the law enforcement side of things. Law is a field that embraces logic, and a Vulcan following the pursuit of order makes perfect sense. Tuvok also brings an analytical study of criminal behavior patterns, something that comes to the fore in what turned out to be his best episode, Meld.

Tuvok's second most critical development episode is probably Random Thoughts. This episode also highlights the law enforcement angle, but more specifically in terms of contrasting his own, more pragmatic approach with that of the rigid, draconian society we meet there. Tuvok doesn't expect to change the minds of those around him, he doesn't expect to force order upon the chaos, he's just interested in maintaining a system under which a diverse collection of peoples can coexist.

I also was a big fan of his mental tutoring sessions with Kes. While she was around, she was his strongest connection to the rest of the crew. What made it work for me is that they were so different in their world-views, and yet were still completely compatible. Where Neelix would try to force his differences on Tuvok, Kes simply embraced Tuvok's outlook as another thing to appreciate. Her healthier approach to life gave Tuvok room to reach out to her as well. Even though Janeway had this old friendship with him, his connection with Kes was much more believable.

Missed Opportunities

That said, I really think the angle of "Tuvok the pragmatist" got dropped way too early. For his part in Prime Factors, I loved his reasoning for working behind Janeway's back to steal the technology. He did it so that she could still look good while giving the crew a way home, and I thought it gave him a fresh but still reverent angle on the Vulcan outlook. The writers had just intended it to be a cheesy "logic led me astray!" moment, so the opportunity was lost, but I kept hoping for that Tuvok to return.

Due to Tuvok's relative absence from the later seasons, there were several relationships that either never arose or withered without attention. I mentioned his few interactions with Seven in her review, but there's also Tuvok and Torres - an oddball pairing that worked due to grudging respect. Since the Tuvok and Neelix relationship was much more important to Neelix, I'll save an evaluation of it for his review, but for now I'll just say that I took Tuvok's side every time, even when the script didn't. But the most conspicuously absent relationship has got to be between Tuvok and Chakotay - Tuvok infiltrated Chakotay's crew, earned his trust, betrayed him, and now he's next in line for the first officer position. There is a brief talk between them in one of the Seska episodes, but there could have been so much more going on there.

Vulcans are a fan-favorite alpha quadrant species, and he's wound up as the only Vulcan in the delta quandrant. Moreso than any other character, I needed Tuvok to be awesome, because I wanted the delta quadrant to know why Vulcans are so cool. However, more often than not, he's just as easily debilitated by mental tricks, and any time he might have a Vulcan edge, the Doctor and Seven just get to be even more awesome.

The Actor

Tim Russ is a rare kind of Trek actor in that he actually liked Trek before he became involved in it. As a result, the memory alpha annotations for the first three seasons are littered with citations of his feedback on the dialogue and plot of the episodes he was involved with. A large number of those examples are him simply saying that Tuvok or a Vulcan simply wouldn't say or do the things the writers wanted him to, and it shows. A number of the Voyager writers went on to Enterprise where, like it or hate it, the Vulcans are jerks. To be fair, very often writers would try to use Spock or Data or Seven as sock puppets to show how awesome emotions are, this isn't a Voyager-specific phenomena - but it was the grace with which those characters accepted the cajoling of their annoying crew members which made them so sympathetic.

In that environment, Russ fought to keep Tuvok out of that kind of story and position, and I think that's a major part of why his character remained high on the charts for so long. However, I suspect his steadfastness on those issues is also a factor in the decline in Tuvok plots in the series; if the writers couldn't write what they wanted to about him, why write about him at all? This is pure speculation, and unlike Robert Beltran, Russ has been very professional about not blaming the writing crew. I'm just trying to figure out why a guy who loves Trek and actually got to be on a Trek show would pursue his music career halfway through the series. He's got a good voice, to be sure, but I suspect that there's more to it than that - and I don't buy that the guy who fought against making Tuvok look dumb for being logical could really be upset that the role of a Vulcan is not giving him the chance to fully express his range as an actor.

Final Thoughts

Tuvok is probably the character that suffered the most from the addition of Seven to the cast. When the writers had a choice between writing for the stoic character whose goal was to become more human and the stoic character whose goal was to remain less human, they opted for Seven. A side effect of that choice is that Tuvok, who had most of his development in the first three seasons, is the only character in the show who doesn't have any 5/5 episodes centered on him. I like Tuvok, and I liked Tim Russ' portrayal of him, but overall I wouldn't say he's my third favorite character on the show.

Seven of Nine Evaluation

Survival Instinct 5 Imperfection 5 Repentance 5 One 5 Tsunkatse 4 The Raven 4 Infinite Regress 4 Relativity 4 Bliss 4 Human Error 4 Child's Play 3 Drone 3 The Omega Directive 3 Dark Frontier 3* Retrospect 3 Natural Law 3 Unimatrix Zero, Part II 3 Scorpion, Part II 2 Unimatrix Zero 2 Collective 2 The Voyager Conspiracy 2 Prey 1 Someone to Watch Over Me 1 Body and Soul 1 Average Score 3.1

Seven of Nine Average End of Season Rank: 2.50 (2nd place) Highest Rank: 2nd Lowest Rank: 5th

Seized Opportunities

Like the Doctor, we also got a full season's worth of Seven-centric episodes, but she arrived a full three seasons after he did. I'm not surprised - the concept of a character who has been freed from the hive mind of the Borg also presents a cornucopia of dramatic potential. In the simplest sense, there were two major directions in which the writers could develop her character. The first stems from the fact that she was assimilated at such a young age that she had spent most of her life as a member of the collective. As such, she could act as a voice for the Borg in a way that Locutus never could; she could be someone who genuinely believes in the benefits that the Borg grant a person. Alternately, she could be on a quest for the humanity that she barely had in the first place. The writers decided that they could have it both ways.

For her first couple of seasons, they took the "voice of the Borg" path. This led the constant clashing between her and Janeway, and while Seven was always given weak arguments, Janeway's were weaker yet the scripts always took her side. As you can imagine, nothing could have been more effective at making me sympathetic towards Seven. While that may not have been the intended goal of those stories, I'll still count that in the win column for Seven. This version of Seven is probably best exemplified in The Omega Directive.

Dark Frontier started a slow metamorphasis of Seven's character into the former Borg with a personal quest to regain her individuality. I cannot express to you how much more compelling to me a personal quest to become human was as opposed to a quest imposed upon her by Janeway. While Dark Frontier was disappointing to me on the whole, I do appreciate what it meant for Seven in the long run. Without this change in direction, her choice to treat the hive mind as a fate worse than death in Survival Instinct might not have been as potent.

One aspect of early-Seven that was played up effectively was the fearful reactions of various crew members and random aliens to a former Borg drone. While those reactions were somewhat diminished by her decidedly un-Borg appearance, the contrast between their fears and her own surprise that anyone would blame her gave some interesting food for thought. Seven can hardly be personally responsible for her actions as a Borg, but as an advocate for the Borg she would need to somehow justify her beliefs in light of the fear she inspires. I'd have liked for that cognitive dissonance to have been the catalyst for the change in her direction as a character, but I can't have everything I want, now can I?

Being the two most important characters of the latter four seasons of Voyager, and both characters with similar goals and capabilities, it is little wonder that Seven and the Doctor formed such an effective partnership. I'm okay with their romance failing - well, I'd have been even more okay with their romance never forming in the first place - largely because it wasn't necessary to make them a good team. In fact, we got a couple subtly poignant moments because they didn't work out, and I'll count that as a win too.

Missed Opportunities

Her outfits were ridiculous. The Maquis crew were put in Starfleet uniforms on day one, she could at least have had one of those. See, Seven was an interesting character, but keeping her in that ludicrous form-fitting suit only served to distract from that, and make it so that any defense of her as an interesting character also needs to spend a full paragraph on how ridiculous her outfits were. Maybe the writers didn't know what a story goldmine they had in her, and felt they needed something else to make her more compelling. But really, that sort of excuses maybe one season of awful uniforms, not four. True, it took Troi seven years to wind up in a real uniform, but the same people who put her in a uniform were still in charge for Voyager.

Well, okay, according to memory alpha, that was Ronald D. Moore's idea... I guess if I had a dollar for every time I wished that Voyager had done something the way RDM would have, I would be able to buy a season or two on DVD.

Anyways, I do consider it to be a grave disservice to the character to have not effectively used the "voice of the Borg" character path. In fact, the most thoughtful evaluation of the benefits of a hive mind came from Unity, an episode that happened half a season before Seven would even show up. Once she was there, there was no more discussion of how nice it would be to have no racism, no pain, and no unfulfilled desires. Probably the closest we got was her choice in Human Error to not allow the Doctor to fix her implant that prevented her from feeling any too-intense emotion. That counts as a missed opportunity in itself though, as it is never mentioned again until the finale, when Seven just asks to have it fixed.

Tuvok had largely faded into the background after Seven's arrival, but the two made a very interesting team in both The Raven and Tsunkatse. Having both on the same show is kind of like having Spock and Data around at the same time - Tuvok's primary goal in life is to overcome his emotions, while Seven's goal is to regain her individuality. A more prominent friendship between the two could have led to some interesting debates, and would have filled a void in Tuvok's character that had been there since Kes left.

The Actress

Jeri Ryan can act. I didn't believe it at first. They'd hired a model, and I was not surprised that she could keep a dour expression on her face. However, any time the writers gave her an opportunity to play some other character, she knocked it out of the park. As she regained her individuality, bit by bit, Ryan was strong enough to slowly work that change into her performance. I'm sure she was hired just because she could fill out the catsuit, but they got more than they bargained for.

Final Thoughts

I was predisposed to dislike Seven. As someone who hated Voyager without having watched most of it, she became a symbol to me of everything that had gone wrong with it. I saw her as this cynical grab for young male viewers, and, to be perfectly fair, she was. To make matters worse, on this watch through, I greatly enjoyed Kes, so I really didn't want to like Seven. It took me a while to warm up to her, largely because of Janeway's antics when Seven was around. Once she had an opportunity to break away from Janeway as a character, I became much more impressed with her, and with the places the writers were going with her.

The Doctor Evaluation

Living Witness 5 Latent Image 5 The Thaw 5 Nothing Human 5 Author, Author 5 Message in a Bottle 4 Life Line 4 Flesh and Blood 4* Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy 4 Revulsion 4 Projections 4 Heroes and Demons 4 Bliss 4 The Swarm 3 Critical Care 3 Renaissance Man 3 Real Life 2 Darkling 2 Lifesigns 2 Virtuoso 1 Someone to Watch Over Me 1 Body and Soul 1 Average Score 3.4

The Doctor Average End of Season Rank: 2.14 (1st place) Highest Rank: 1st Lowest Rank: 5th

Seized Opportunities

Considering that we got a full season's worth of Doctor-centric episodes, if the writers could go somewhere with his character, they did. As a character that essentially came into the world for the first time (albeit with a lifetime of medical knowledge) in the show's first episode, there were plenty of dramatic options.

There have only been a couple of sentient holograms in other Trek series, and Vic Fontaine would actually arrive on DS9 significantly after the start of Voyager. The other, Moriarty, from TNG, was constantly underestimated by the crew, but the issue of his rights as a living being was kind of swept aside due to his villainous behavior. The Doctor, on the other hand, is a critical member of Voyager's crew, yet he doesn't have any rank or official standing. The show very effectively uses his abrasive bedside manner to make it easier for the rest of the crew to dismiss his demands for new rights and privileges without looking like jerks themselves. The Doctor's place in the crew comes to its strongest conclusion in Latent Image. Up until then, all of his complaints were relatively minor - but having his memory altered because he was having emotional trouble with a medical decision that he had to make crossed a line.

For the first couple seasons, the biggest thing that separated the Doctor from the rest of the crew was his inability to leave sickbay. This restriction was also milked about as far as it could go, until the mobile emitter showed up in Future's End. Picardo has admitted an amount of trepidation about the decision to grant his character that freedom, as he was concerned that his inability to leave sickbay may have been part of what made audiences like his character so much. I can only imagine that the writers shared the same concerns, and I'm glad they they overcame them. Giving the Doctor the freedom of movement was the first step along the path of personal betterment that came to characterize the Doctor in later seasons.

Being a computer program (certainly a very complicated one, but a computer program nonetheless), the Doctor has a unique opportunity for character growth - he can just directly alter his program. He adds various technical and artistic skills, but after Darkling's disastrous efforts at altering his personality, he turns away from that kind of alteration. That makes a reasonable amount of sense universe-wise, but even more sense character-wise. If the Doctor didn't have to work for his character growth, it wouldn't be as valuable when it happens. That might be an interesting place to go with a different artificially intelligent character, but I'm glad they didn't go that way with him.

As for romance... this one kind of straddles the line for me. Too often I felt like his romantic efforts were hormonal in nature, which just makes no sense; it makes no sense because he has no hormones. However, I'm not opposed to the idea that an emotional artificial intelligence could form strong and even passionate friendships. The thing is, that takes time. Whenever he'd have some sort of fling, that's what I have a problem with. But his relationship with Seven was built up gradually and effectively, and made more sense considering the scope of his programming.

Missed Opportunities

Well, these aren't "missed opportunities" as much as they are "not quite perfectly executed opportunities." Since the overwhelmingly positive fan reaction to the Doctor was not entirely expected, his growth was slow at first. Furthermore, the crew's acceptance of him was covered in small ways, in the b and c plots of early episodes. Once it became clear to the writing staff that the Doctor was something they'd done right, these issues were reexamined - despite the fact that it felt strange for the other characters to suddenly lose their progress with their acceptance of him.

I'm also annoyed that the Doctor was left on a sour note at the end of the series. Exploring the Doctor's evolving arrogant attitude toward the rest of the crew could be interesting, even if it made a great character less likable - but that was it. He wasn't given an opportunity to learn humility, or at least learn it is kind of a jerk thing to do to write opuses on hologram rights, only to stat calling your friends "biologics."

If I go through all the missed opportunities for every character that occurred because Voyager didn't spend any time on the post-arrival fallout, I'd never finish writing these evaluations. But, because this is the first, and the Doctor's problems on Earth are hinted at so strongly in Author, Author, I will remark that it's a shame we'll never know what happens to all those mining EMHs.

The Actor

So, the Doctor is a character with lots of potential that the writers actually explored, but that's only part of the picture; Robert Picardo also happened to be the absolute best guy for the job. He has incredible comic timing and delivery, and used it effectively to elevate the dialogue that he was given. It was particularly evident in the first couple seasons, when the dialogue was particularly awkward, but it was interesting to imagine his lines as said by the other actors on the show. For so many of them, it was easy to see how the words would have seemed bland and lifeless, but when Picardo said them, they came alive.

He's also the only actor to share in the writing credit for any episode. Life Line was fun enough, but the real treat was seeing how well Picardo understood his character, and saw an interesting place to take him. While I said at the time that it'd be fascinating to see each of the actors get a writing shot, there are precious few others who I have any faith that they'd get it right. Picardo was a real find, a talented actor who was personally invested in his character.

Final Thoughts

It is a shame that other characters had to give up screen time to allow the Doctor (and others) to dominate the show, but in his case I feel that sacrifice was completely worth it. While other characters I like inspire varying opinions across the fanbase, I've never heard of anyone who doesn't like the Doctor. That doesn't surprise me. He had it all; an interesting character concept, powerful stories that explore every aspect of his character, and an actor that could pull it all off.

Season Seven Evaluation

Unimatrix Zero, Part II	3
Imperfection	5
Drive	3
Repression	2
Critical Care	3
Inside Man	1
Body and Soul	1
Nightingale	2
Flesh and Blood	4*
Shattered	5
Lineage	4
Repentance	5
Prophecy	4
The Void	4
Workforce, Part I	5
Workforce, Part II	4
Human Error	4
Q2	3
Author, Author	5
Friendship One	3
Natural Law	3
Homestead	5
Renaissance Man	3
Endgame	3*
Average Score:	3.5

Without reservation, I endorse season seven as the best season of Voyager. Even the weaker episodes tend to have more substance and subtlety than those in other seasons. As I remarked in a number of the reviews, I was taken by surprise by the turns the stories would take; season seven was one of constantly subverted expectations. I have some thoughts on why this might be the case, but as it pertains to the series as a whole I think I'll save them for my series wrap-up.

Many of the episodes this season were not only better researched, but were also generally thoughful rather than preachy. I offer, for your consideration, the two death penalty episodes of Voyager: Meld and Repentance. Meld's a season two episode, and it feels like a season 2 episode - one of the better ones, to be sure, but it is completely unsubtle. It blares its message of "capital punishment is bad" so loudly that, even though I agree with it, I was still annoyed to hear it. Repentance, on the other hand, is something I consider to be a quintessentially seventh season episode. It brings up important points in a heated issue, while giving both sides a chance to present reasonable arguments... arguments which are illustrated with the story.

Even an episode like Critical Care, which deals with a real life topic and is one-sided, went to the effort of finding a more obscure topic, and layered its dilemmas effectively. Even if half of it was unsubtle, it did manage to blur the lines somewhat with the Doctor's questionable activities.

Though Seven and the Doctor continued to dominate the stories this season, the writers did a better job of at least throwing bones to other characters. Even Chakotay got a couple episodes, and they also weren't awful. Torres and Neelix got to do some heavy lifting, and minor characters like Icheb had some some excellent stories too.

While Endgame may have been lackluster as a series finale, there were at least some good efforts at late-series wrap-up episodes, most notably Shattered and Homestead. Both stories embraced the episodic nature of Voyager while still providing some continuity to reward long-time viewers.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: Okay, 5/5 is maybe a bit over the top - there are plenty of episodes I'd be happy to have only watched once. But there were only two that I wished I'd never seen for the first time, and this season had the highest concentration of episodes that I'd show someone who doesn't believe Voyager was capable of producing anything of value - like me, seven months ago.

Character Status:

9. Harry Kim: Kim has been absolutely insufferable this season - and has made no progress throughout the series. Seven years later, we're still getting plots about how inexperienced he is, the only difference is that he's really bitter by now. I mean, I guess I can't blame him, what with the lack of promotion and all, but I just don't understand why the writers kept choosing to bring up the lack of promotion without doing anything about it. Screw getting home, I'd have been happier if the last scene of the series were Kim's promotion to lieutenant.

8. Chakotay: Well, he got more screen time in this season than in the last, but the only new thing in his character has been his adoption as Seven's model of humanity. Maybe if he'd been her "mentor" all this time instead of Janeway I could buy it, but I don't really. However, I do have a new link for you to some of Beltran's (in)famous gripes: here you go.

7. Kathryn Janeway: Janeway was a lot mellower this season, and the condescension is all but gone. She's been more introspective, while still maintaining her authority for command decisions. This is a great start. Too bad it's the last season, but at least she broke out of the bottom two for one of the seven seasons.

6. Tuvok: Again, very little screen time for Tuvok this season - and Repentance should've been a shoe-in for him given his role as a law enforcement guy. He's still a good character, but they just haven't gone anywhere with him.

5. Tom Paris: I'll admit, this high position on the list is largely due to his (relatively minor but good) part in Endgame, but impending fatherhood is a decent niche for this character. It's a shame that they always looked more specifically at Torres' hopes and fears for their child - well, not really a shame, because Torres benefited greatly from it - but given Tom's poor relationship with his own father the writers had plenty of material that they let slip through their fingers. Well, that and given all the times Admiral Paris speaks to the crew, he never exchanges any words with Tom.

4. B'Elanna Torres: When you think of characters that dominated Voyager, the Doctor and Seven are the first that come to mind, but the writers have done reasonably well by Torres throughout, and this season is no exception. The biggest jump in this list is between numbers four and five; starting with Torres, each of these characters have been more than pulling their weight.

3. The Doctor: Okay, now I've got some Doctor fatigue. I mean, Picardo is still great, but his character got pretty grating this season - basically, he found Janeway's discarded condescension and decided to try it on. Given that he's started to call his fellow crew mates "organics," I imagine that more seasons would've seen his character become less and less likeable. It would be one thing if the crew actually did treat him differently for being a hologram, but they don't.

2. Seven of Nine: She's basically the title character of the show by now, even eclipsing Janeway, so I suppose it is a good thing that she's interesting. She got several interesting stories, and the writers also thankfully backed off on her "superpowers" - making her a better rounded character.

So, let's see. Who's left?

Oh, really, interesting.

I guess that means:

1. Neelix: I completely forgive the writers for making Neelix so unbearable for three seasons, since it made his redemption that much sweeter. He's the only character that got a good closure episode, but he's the one who deserved it the most. Congratulations Neelix, you've made it.

S7 E25/26: Endgame

In the future, Admiral Janeway is wracked with guilt over not getting her crew home faster - they have arrived at Earth in this future, but after 23 years of travel. She goes back in time and gives her past self a quick route home through a Borg transwarp hub, but present Janeway feels bad about passing up an opportunity to deal a devastating blow to the Borg. Fortunately, the crew finds a way to use the hub and still blow it up, and Admiral Janeway stays behind to kill all the Borg forever.

It is fairly clear to me that the goal of this episode was to recreate All Good Things..., the very successful TNG finale. We've got a look forward towards where the crew could end up in the future, a captain who knows both the past and the present, the return of the series' biggest villain, and a bizarre romance that has been lightly foreshadowed earlier in the season. So they hit the major plot points, but how did the episode do?

They spent a lot of time on the Admiral Janeway future in order to establish Janeway's survivor guilt. Personally, I think they could have dropped this whole part of the episode, giving more time at the end for post-arrival fallout. I thought the parts with Tuvok's dementia (good to see that old theme resurface) were well-handled, but the reunion, the Borg classroom exercise, the whole incident with the Klingons, and Janeway's debate with Kim about altering the timeline took up more time than their overall effect upon the story could justify. Admiral Janeway even recaps all the future events for the present crew anyways, so starting with the rift opening would have been perfectly fine.

Janeway's dilemma was also very unsatisfying for me. Much of Admiral Janeway's remorse seems to be built off missed opportunities to return home, but she travels back to a missed opportunity that they didn't even really know they had. If past Janeway had found the hub and shied away from it on her own, that would have put a lot more fuel into the debate between herself and her future self. She could have had a reference point from which she could understand or identify with her future self's guilt if she'd actively chosen not to take the hub, and only afterward came to know what would become Seven, Chakotay, and Tuvok as a result of her actions. Sure, she did turn down an opportunity to explore the nebula that contained the hub, but that's no where near as potent since you can't really feel guilty about not exploring every nebula.

Remember Shattered, where I applauded the episode for looking back without patting itself on the back too much? Well, probably the best way to describe the episode (after Admiral Janeway's appearance in the present) is self-congratulatory. Maybe the admiral just knows that the best way to convince herself to listen to anyone is through flattery, but boy does she lay it on thick. "You know, I was pretty awesome." "Yup, I sure am!" "How does it feel to be so awesome?" "I've gotta tell you, it is pretty awesome being awesome."

The Borg Queen is much more effective here, and only part of it is because of the actress switch (they used the First Contact actress instead of the one they had been using for Voyager). In general, she's much more Borg in her behavior than even in First Contact. Instead of getting riled up by Janeway's antics, she maintains an unflappable exterior, even through the part where her interior gets gobbled up by some virus. She takes a calm, Borg approach to things, seeing problems and trying to solve them in a step-wise process (where most of the steps are assimilation).

In terms of temporal mechanics, it is par for the course for Trek for a person from the future to be able to alter the past in such a way that it becomes no longer necessary for that person to make that same trip again. Time loops don't need to be closed in Trek, I'm okay with that. What's really strange is how the Borg Queen implies to Admiral Janeway that if past Janeway is unsuccessful in blowing up the hub, somehow that will Back to the Future (used as a verb) Admiral Janeway out of existence and and prevent the destruction of the Borg. Well, if that's how it works, won't Voyager's shortcut home also destroy the world of Admiral Janeway? You'd think that the physical manifestation of the Borg hive mind would understand Trek temporal mechanics better.

I suppose I should also touch on the issue of "Did Admiral Janeway destroy all the Borg forever?" To that, I give a resounding 'meh.' I mean, I doubt they're all dead - we've killed queens before, both in First Contact and in Best of Both Worlds (though the awesome power of retcon!), and that had no widespread effect. I suppose this is a little different, since (A) the FC queen was temporally separated from the hive, and (B) the BoBW queen was geographically separated from the hive, and (C) There's also the issue of Janeway's virus thing, but I just think the Borg are too a-centralized to be destroyed like that. But the real reason that I'm apathetic about this question is I honestly haven't been very happy with Voyager's uses of the Borg in general; they've been so neutered at this point that I wonder if maybe it is time to put them out to pasture. Truly, the only time the Borg even approached their FC and prior scariness is in the fake future from Living Witness, when storm trooper Seven goes nuts on the aliens of the week.

So what were the rest of the crew up to? At the beginning of this review, I drew the comparison between Seven and Chakotay's relationship and the one between Worf and Troi. Both Troi and Chakotay have back-burner relationships with crew members that seem to have been cast aside, but All Good Things actually addresses that. In the TNG false-future, Worf and Riker have a feud going over Troi, but Janeway never even remarks on her relationship with Chakotay, and the Doctor doesn't make a peep about Seven. The real problem though is how central the Chakotay/Seven romance is to this plot. It appears out of nowhere in the second half of this season, and suddenly Chakotay is emotionally crippled by Seven's (future) death while no one else is. It's just very ineffective at affecting the audience's emotional connection to the story, considering all the time spent on other relationships in the body of the series.

Torres is also giving birth throughout this episode, and it gives rise to some of the best material in these two hours. Sure, it takes the Doctor and Torres out of much of the action of this episode, but they're doing what they do best: the Doctor is being wry and Torres is being angry. This plot is mostly played for comedy, but the actors do it so well that I enjoyed every bit of it. I loved the false-alarm labor wake up with Torres and Paris, and every scene with them in sickbay.

Kim looked tired. I watched this with a friend who'd never seen an episode of Voyager, and one of the things he remarked on is how old Kim seemed to be. He tried to play his usual enthusiasm angle, but it fell flat due to how exhausted he looked throughout the show. However, he does have a good scene with Paris - no, not just good, the best scene of the episode, and the best excuse the writers could give for not spending any time on the post-arrival reactions. Kim is all excited about a risky plan to explore the nebula, and tries to get Paris excited about it too. The thing is, Paris is less than a day away from becoming a father, and just can't be bothered. Why? Because he doesn't need to risk his life or Kim's life in order to get home; he's already there, and says as much.

As I've remarked before, part of the problem with the show is that half the characters have no reason to be excited about returning to Earth. Here, in this scene with Kim and Paris, I've come to terms with that arrangement, and that's why I'd honestly have been okay with an episode like Shattered as the series finale. Voyager is the home that this crew has been looking for, and it has been with them all along. If that had been the message of this episode, I'd have embraced it with open arms.

Watchability: 3/5

Bottom Line: This episode tried very hard to be an Epic Series Finale for a show that didn't really need one. While I didn't necessarily want them to pull a full-on Angel series finale cliffhanger (though, for the record, I liked that approach there), something more understated that used the theme of "Voyager is the home we've been trying to reach" could ultimately have been more powerful.