Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Of course, and I'm not disagreeing that the VOY episode is bad. It's just a guilty pleasure for me because of the actress.
Wacky Reviews: Star Trek
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CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Demon - Voyager starts having power cuts as they've suddenly ran out of deuterium. You'd think they would have had more warning that they were about to run out of something so important? Everyone has to move out of their quarters into a shared space and Tuvok gives Neelix into trouble for taking a book and blankets with him. Why? Space can't be THAT cramped! He tells Neelix he has to use Starfleet issue blankets instead of his own and I can already tell this is going to be a bad episode, sorry. Seven luckily finds deuterium right in time on a "demon class" planet that they can't possibly even go near or they'll blow up or something. Harry comes up with a plan to fly a shuttle to the planet with Tom and stands up to Tuvok when he tells him it's a bad idea. Harry makes a big speech to Tom after about how he's a changed man after four years on Voyager and he's going to kick everyone's ass and this is never going to come up again after this episode. Right after landing on the planet Harry falls into a pull of metallic looking liqud so looks like Tuvok was right. Tom pulls him out but both their spacesuits have leaks and they...die? Neelix and some silent friends want to sleep in Sickbay against the Doctor's wishes. Chakotay allows it. Voyager easily lands on the planet in an attempt to save Tom and Harry. Why didn't they just do that in the first place? We don't even get a good shot of the ship landing. (Okay to be fair Tuvok says they won't be able to take off for a long time due to all the damage but they'll mean nothing.) B'Elanna wants to go on the rescue mission but Chuckles says she's too emotional so she tells him to take Seven. The Doctor annoys Neelix by singing.
Chakotay and Seven search the planet. Chakotay nearly falls in the liquid but Tom (without his spacesuit on) saves him. He tries to convince Seven and Chakotay to take their helmets off but they think he's gone mad. There's a pointless but with B'Elanna and Vorik (in his first and only appearance of the season.) The Doc kicks Neelix and the non-speakers out of Sickbay to treat Tom and Harry, who find they can't breathe when they're beamed up to the ship. The Doctor finds they have to keep breathing the planet's gases to survive, and they can't replicate the gases once they leave the planet so they might have to stay behind. Oh no, we coud lose Harry! Harry explores the planet with Chakotay and Seven and starts talking about how beautiful it is. Some of the liquid touches B'Elanna then turns into a replica of her finger. This kind of gives away what's about to happen: Harry finds ANOTHER Harry and Tom (unconscious and still in their spacesits) in a cave. Voyager starts to sink into a pool of the liquid. Liquid Harry refuses to be beamed back to Voyager with the others because he loves the planet so much. Voyager can't escape the liquid. The Doc "explains" that the "back-up systems" in the spacesuits kept Tom and Harry alive. What does that even mean? They were about to run out of oxygen! That was hours ago! How could "back-up systems" make up for a lack of oxygen? Liquid Harry "explains" that he's connected to planet and Voyager can't leave. He's hurt when Voyager shoots at the liquid on the surface. He "explains" that when the liquid sampled Tom and Harry's DNA it gave the liquid awareness. It wants to duplicate the rest of the crew to experience sentience through them. Janeway doesn't want to stay on the planet, obviously, but Harry says they deserve life. Janeway agrees to allow the crew to be replicated because it won't actually harm them. Voyager takes off and we see a whole crew standing on the planet watching it.
Okay, let's summarise the plot here. Harry says he's a new man and isn't going to take any crap, but that doesn't factor into the rest of the episode despite Harry literally becoming a new man. Tom and Harry run out of oxygen and die (their condition is later updated to "alive.") A fake Tom and Harry are created by the planet. We find out about them about ten minutes before the end. The drama finally arrives in liquid Harry not letting Voyager leave because he wants friends. Janeway doesn't actually face any dilemma here, as there's no downside to creating the duplicates, so she just shrugs and lets it happen. The end. That's not much plot! I mean I appreciate that it's a bit weird but...you need a plot. You can't just be weird for the sake of it. It's a pointless mess of an episode.
SCORE: 3/10
One - Seven tries to chat with a holographic Harry and B'Elanna, under the Doctor's instructions. She is bad at it. Voyager comes across a Mutara Class nebula (like in WOK!) which makes them horribly ill when they fly through it and of course it's too big to go around like everything Voyager ever comes across. One redshirt dies just so you know this is serious (lol.) Luckily the crew can be protected by the deadly radiation by going into stasis pods and I'm pretty sure that doesn't make sense (why wouldn't the radiation just travel through the pods?) Only the Doctor and Seven were unaffected by the nebula and will be the only crew left awake. Janeway warns Seven that it'll be hard to just have one person/hologram to talk to but Seven says she'll adapt. Chakotay is worried about leaving Seven in charge of their lives but Janeway thinks Seven is cool. Everyone goes to sleep and ten days later we see Seven's daily routine on the empty ship. She finds Tom unconscious as he's somehow left his pod and started wandering about (strangely he isn't horribly burned like everyone was at the start of the episode?) Seven and the Doc bicker so he orders her to go back to the Holodeck and work on her people skills. She doesn't really socialise much even on the Holodeck and just does engineering again, much to the Doctor's annoyance. Voyager's plasma conduits start to rupture but it's apparently just a false alarm. The Doc says it's a problem with the neural gel packs (remember them!) giving false readings. The Doc's mobile emitter starts to breakdown as they fix the gel packs and they have to get him back to Sickbay before it cuts out (as apparently he'll be dead if his emitter cuts out?) The Doctor can't leave Sickbay now so Seven is even more alone.
The ship's computer starts to malfunction too. It's weird how this nebula effects everything except Seven's implants. She hears Tom's voice but finds him still in his pod. A kind of pervy alien appears out of nowhere in the nebula and wants to trade things with Seven (he claims to have never heard of the Borg.) He asks Seven how she's handling the loneliness and offers to bang her so she'll be less lonely. She tries to kick him off Voyager, but is distracted by Tom's whining again and the alien disappers. The Doctor can't find him (HMM, WONDER WHY.) The Doc asks Seven if she's scared but she's says she's Borg. She hears creepy voices of the whole crew asking for help as she walks around the corridors looking for the alien bastard. She hears the alien threatening to blow up the warp core and stuff. He dims the lights a bit. Scary! She sees Tom and Harry catch fire. She outsmarts the alien and traps him on the Bridge. The alien gets away somehow and starts taunting Seven. The Doctor finally shows up (his emitter started working again) and says there's no one else there. The alien was imagined all along! The Doctor thinks the radiation has been effected her Borg implantes (okay my complaint from earlier has been addressed!) and altering her perception of reality. Seven tells a story of once being seperated from the Borg collective and getting scared. More stuff goes wrong with the ship and the Doc cuts out. Seven is taunted by an imagined asshole Harry Kim as she works to keep the ship going. A Borg drone shows up too to tell her a Borg cannot be "one" (that's the name of the episode!) She has more and more hallucinations (maybe too many) but manages to ignore them and keep the ship flying long enough to get them out the nebula. Eventually she cutes life support becaue it's the only way to keep the stasis pods going and nearly dies. Seven goes and sits with Tom, Harry and B'Elanna in the Mess Hall after she wakes up and makes fun of Tom's sleep walking.
If you like Seven (and why wouldn't you) it's a good episode. I don't want to just keep saying "Jeri Ryan does a great job!" but she does, and the hallucinations nicely shows her inner feelings, for the most part. I like how she hears the voices of the crew begging for help like a twisted version of the Borg collective voices. I do think the hallucinations went a bit over the top by the end, with the whole crew standing around telling her what a loser she is and everything. I think the point had already been made by then. And Tom's sleepwalking really should have killed him! Anyway it's good.
SCORE: 8/10
Chakotay and Seven search the planet. Chakotay nearly falls in the liquid but Tom (without his spacesuit on) saves him. He tries to convince Seven and Chakotay to take their helmets off but they think he's gone mad. There's a pointless but with B'Elanna and Vorik (in his first and only appearance of the season.) The Doc kicks Neelix and the non-speakers out of Sickbay to treat Tom and Harry, who find they can't breathe when they're beamed up to the ship. The Doctor finds they have to keep breathing the planet's gases to survive, and they can't replicate the gases once they leave the planet so they might have to stay behind. Oh no, we coud lose Harry! Harry explores the planet with Chakotay and Seven and starts talking about how beautiful it is. Some of the liquid touches B'Elanna then turns into a replica of her finger. This kind of gives away what's about to happen: Harry finds ANOTHER Harry and Tom (unconscious and still in their spacesits) in a cave. Voyager starts to sink into a pool of the liquid. Liquid Harry refuses to be beamed back to Voyager with the others because he loves the planet so much. Voyager can't escape the liquid. The Doc "explains" that the "back-up systems" in the spacesuits kept Tom and Harry alive. What does that even mean? They were about to run out of oxygen! That was hours ago! How could "back-up systems" make up for a lack of oxygen? Liquid Harry "explains" that he's connected to planet and Voyager can't leave. He's hurt when Voyager shoots at the liquid on the surface. He "explains" that when the liquid sampled Tom and Harry's DNA it gave the liquid awareness. It wants to duplicate the rest of the crew to experience sentience through them. Janeway doesn't want to stay on the planet, obviously, but Harry says they deserve life. Janeway agrees to allow the crew to be replicated because it won't actually harm them. Voyager takes off and we see a whole crew standing on the planet watching it.
Okay, let's summarise the plot here. Harry says he's a new man and isn't going to take any crap, but that doesn't factor into the rest of the episode despite Harry literally becoming a new man. Tom and Harry run out of oxygen and die (their condition is later updated to "alive.") A fake Tom and Harry are created by the planet. We find out about them about ten minutes before the end. The drama finally arrives in liquid Harry not letting Voyager leave because he wants friends. Janeway doesn't actually face any dilemma here, as there's no downside to creating the duplicates, so she just shrugs and lets it happen. The end. That's not much plot! I mean I appreciate that it's a bit weird but...you need a plot. You can't just be weird for the sake of it. It's a pointless mess of an episode.
SCORE: 3/10
One - Seven tries to chat with a holographic Harry and B'Elanna, under the Doctor's instructions. She is bad at it. Voyager comes across a Mutara Class nebula (like in WOK!) which makes them horribly ill when they fly through it and of course it's too big to go around like everything Voyager ever comes across. One redshirt dies just so you know this is serious (lol.) Luckily the crew can be protected by the deadly radiation by going into stasis pods and I'm pretty sure that doesn't make sense (why wouldn't the radiation just travel through the pods?) Only the Doctor and Seven were unaffected by the nebula and will be the only crew left awake. Janeway warns Seven that it'll be hard to just have one person/hologram to talk to but Seven says she'll adapt. Chakotay is worried about leaving Seven in charge of their lives but Janeway thinks Seven is cool. Everyone goes to sleep and ten days later we see Seven's daily routine on the empty ship. She finds Tom unconscious as he's somehow left his pod and started wandering about (strangely he isn't horribly burned like everyone was at the start of the episode?) Seven and the Doc bicker so he orders her to go back to the Holodeck and work on her people skills. She doesn't really socialise much even on the Holodeck and just does engineering again, much to the Doctor's annoyance. Voyager's plasma conduits start to rupture but it's apparently just a false alarm. The Doc says it's a problem with the neural gel packs (remember them!) giving false readings. The Doc's mobile emitter starts to breakdown as they fix the gel packs and they have to get him back to Sickbay before it cuts out (as apparently he'll be dead if his emitter cuts out?) The Doctor can't leave Sickbay now so Seven is even more alone.
The ship's computer starts to malfunction too. It's weird how this nebula effects everything except Seven's implants. She hears Tom's voice but finds him still in his pod. A kind of pervy alien appears out of nowhere in the nebula and wants to trade things with Seven (he claims to have never heard of the Borg.) He asks Seven how she's handling the loneliness and offers to bang her so she'll be less lonely. She tries to kick him off Voyager, but is distracted by Tom's whining again and the alien disappers. The Doctor can't find him (HMM, WONDER WHY.) The Doc asks Seven if she's scared but she's says she's Borg. She hears creepy voices of the whole crew asking for help as she walks around the corridors looking for the alien bastard. She hears the alien threatening to blow up the warp core and stuff. He dims the lights a bit. Scary! She sees Tom and Harry catch fire. She outsmarts the alien and traps him on the Bridge. The alien gets away somehow and starts taunting Seven. The Doctor finally shows up (his emitter started working again) and says there's no one else there. The alien was imagined all along! The Doctor thinks the radiation has been effected her Borg implantes (okay my complaint from earlier has been addressed!) and altering her perception of reality. Seven tells a story of once being seperated from the Borg collective and getting scared. More stuff goes wrong with the ship and the Doc cuts out. Seven is taunted by an imagined asshole Harry Kim as she works to keep the ship going. A Borg drone shows up too to tell her a Borg cannot be "one" (that's the name of the episode!) She has more and more hallucinations (maybe too many) but manages to ignore them and keep the ship flying long enough to get them out the nebula. Eventually she cutes life support becaue it's the only way to keep the stasis pods going and nearly dies. Seven goes and sits with Tom, Harry and B'Elanna in the Mess Hall after she wakes up and makes fun of Tom's sleep walking.
If you like Seven (and why wouldn't you) it's a good episode. I don't want to just keep saying "Jeri Ryan does a great job!" but she does, and the hallucinations nicely shows her inner feelings, for the most part. I like how she hears the voices of the crew begging for help like a twisted version of the Borg collective voices. I do think the hallucinations went a bit over the top by the end, with the whole crew standing around telling her what a loser she is and everything. I think the point had already been made by then. And Tom's sleepwalking really should have killed him! Anyway it's good.
SCORE: 8/10
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
I like bottle shows. (Bottle shows are episodes written to be budget-conscious, where the story takes place on existing sets, and there are a minimum of guest stars). "One" is a bottle show, as is the upcoming 5th season premiere "Night". For VOY, they are the episodes that show the less-exciting part of having to travel 70K light years: The times spent just exploring parts of the ship, or watching the crew walk around with little to do, etc. One and Night (and Good Shepherd which shows us Deck 15) are episodes I'm drawn to watch more than others.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
I forgot they had a 'Lower Decks' episode in season 6 and it resulted in me looking at the episode list for season 6 and yikes...
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Hope and Fear - Janeway and Seven shoot a space frisbee together. Janeway wins. Seven wants a rematch but Janeway refuses and to teach Seven to be a good sport. That's not much of a teaser for the season finale. Janeway is still trying to decode the message Starfleet Command sent five months ago. An alien named Arturis (Ray "Leland Palmer" Wise) is visiting Voyager and just happens to be an expert on languages. Janeway shows him the coded message and he thinks he can help. Seven brings up that his people have never been assimilated by the Borg...yet. He finds a set of coordinates in the message. Voyager heads there and finds a Starfleet ship waiting for them. No one seems to think it's suspcious that this ship is so close to their current position when it's five months since they got the message? But Janeway isn't ready to get too excited yet. Chakotay, Tuvok and Tom beam over and it does look like a futuristic Starfleet vessel, but without a normal warp core. The ship goes into "slipstream" mode by itself and travels 15 light yearss in a matter of seconds (I guess that's impressive?) Arturis decodes a message from Admiral Hayes (who seemingly died in First Contact and is an odd choice as a guest star) who explains that it's an experimental ship, the USS Dauntless. The crew will have to leave Voyager behind to take the Dauntless home. In private Janeway confesses to Tuvok that this all seems too convenient. She wants Tuvok to investigate the ship and Arturis to make sure this isn't all a big lie (spoiler: it is.) Harry, Seven and Torres work to get the slipstream working right. Torres would like to go home even though Seven points out she'll be arrested for being a Maquis. Seven isn't excited. Harry says it won't be the same without Seven if she doesn't come with them and Seven actually smiles. Harry finds something weird.
Seven tells Janeway she's not coming to the AQ. Janeway tells Seven she's human now and she shouldn't turn her back on it. Seven says Janeway has failed to make her more human and she doesn't share her values or give a fuck about Earth. Janeway says she won't just leave Seven alone in the DQ as she wouldnt strand anyone like that. She thinks Seven is afraid to go back to Earth. Janeway puts together the REAL message from Admrial Hayes. It's just him apologising for not being able to find a way home. So why the fuck was it encoded? Harry and Tuvok have found that the Dauntless is an alien ship disguised as a Starfleet one. Janeway, Seven and loads of security people beam over to the Dauntless to arrest Arturis. He accuses Seven of creating a fake message but Janeway doesn't believe him for a minute. He pulls a SECRET LEVER that turns the Dauntless back into an alien ship and escapes into the slipstream with Janeway and Seven as hostages the bastard. Arturis finally explains why he's so mad at Janeway and Seven: it's because Janeway helped the Borg defeat Species 8472. His people were assimilated by the Borg shortly after that. He thinks Janeway is responsible because 8472 could have wiped out the Borg. How, exactly, does he know about Janeway's deal with the Borg? Did he find out from them? From a member of 8472? Janeway's says she's sorry but too bad. Arturis followed Voyager for months waiting for a chance to create a false message (how lucky they got a message at the time he was following them!) and is taking them back to Borg space to be assimilated together. Voyager follows the Dauntless inside the slipstream even though it'll tear Voyager apart in a few minutes as usual. Janeway modifies Seven's implants so she can walk right through the forcefield in the brig they're trapped in. She tells Seven so never regretted bringing her onboard but can't always be her friend since she's her Captain. Seven makes a joke! Seven and Janeway gets out and try to cut the slipstream. Arturis cuts the breaks (or whatever) so there's no stopping before Borg space, but hey slow the ship enough that Voyager catches up. Janeway and Seven are beamed out and Arturis ends up being assimilated. Voyager gets 300 light years closer to home before the slipstrem breaks. Janeway and Seven shoot stuff again and Seven admits she didn't like the thought of becoming a drone again.
It's the season ender and it does get a bit retrospective about the Janeay/Seven relationship, which has been the highlight of the season. Otherwise it just feels like a fairly normal episode. Arturis isn't a very good villain and I don't think Ray Wise did his best work under all that latex (he was better in his TNG episode.) I like the idea of Janeway having to face the consequences of the deal she made with the Borg, but she just kind of shrugs it off. I don't think any viewer would have thought the Dauntless was real, but the good thing is that Janeway doesn't really believe it either. It's a good episode for the Janeway/Seven relationship, but it's a shame they couldn't have done something new with the "a way home!" angle as we just get a few token "boy sure would be nice to be home!" scenes.
SCORE: 8/10
And it kind of sums up the whole season. Janeway/Seven is great. Mulgrew does her best work in the whole series and Jeri Ryan is certainly not "Barbie of Borg" as the Kes loving nerds claimed she was. Everyone else though? The Doctor is still good (though oddly not in 'Home and Fear' at all!?) and does get the best episode of the season, so that's fine. Tuvok is always reliable but a bit underused this season, with only one centric episode. Chakotay actually starts off the season well, but by the end is reduced to a lump of wood ('Unforgettable' certainly doesn't help.) B'Elanna is fine but Dawson's pregnancy probably limited what she could do. Neelix is...better than season 3? But still Neelix. Tom is sadly pretty lame now, with the attempt at character development in 'Vis a Vis' being pathetic. And Harry? Completely pointless. Did he get anything all season except having the hots for Seven and that two minutes in 'Demon' where he was a changed man? So yeah this is Voyager's best season yet but looking at the scores it's not THAT much better than the previous one, as any episode that isn't heavily about Seven is just another Voyager episode (with a few nice exceptions obviously!)
Seven tells Janeway she's not coming to the AQ. Janeway tells Seven she's human now and she shouldn't turn her back on it. Seven says Janeway has failed to make her more human and she doesn't share her values or give a fuck about Earth. Janeway says she won't just leave Seven alone in the DQ as she wouldnt strand anyone like that. She thinks Seven is afraid to go back to Earth. Janeway puts together the REAL message from Admrial Hayes. It's just him apologising for not being able to find a way home. So why the fuck was it encoded? Harry and Tuvok have found that the Dauntless is an alien ship disguised as a Starfleet one. Janeway, Seven and loads of security people beam over to the Dauntless to arrest Arturis. He accuses Seven of creating a fake message but Janeway doesn't believe him for a minute. He pulls a SECRET LEVER that turns the Dauntless back into an alien ship and escapes into the slipstream with Janeway and Seven as hostages the bastard. Arturis finally explains why he's so mad at Janeway and Seven: it's because Janeway helped the Borg defeat Species 8472. His people were assimilated by the Borg shortly after that. He thinks Janeway is responsible because 8472 could have wiped out the Borg. How, exactly, does he know about Janeway's deal with the Borg? Did he find out from them? From a member of 8472? Janeway's says she's sorry but too bad. Arturis followed Voyager for months waiting for a chance to create a false message (how lucky they got a message at the time he was following them!) and is taking them back to Borg space to be assimilated together. Voyager follows the Dauntless inside the slipstream even though it'll tear Voyager apart in a few minutes as usual. Janeway modifies Seven's implants so she can walk right through the forcefield in the brig they're trapped in. She tells Seven so never regretted bringing her onboard but can't always be her friend since she's her Captain. Seven makes a joke! Seven and Janeway gets out and try to cut the slipstream. Arturis cuts the breaks (or whatever) so there's no stopping before Borg space, but hey slow the ship enough that Voyager catches up. Janeway and Seven are beamed out and Arturis ends up being assimilated. Voyager gets 300 light years closer to home before the slipstrem breaks. Janeway and Seven shoot stuff again and Seven admits she didn't like the thought of becoming a drone again.
It's the season ender and it does get a bit retrospective about the Janeay/Seven relationship, which has been the highlight of the season. Otherwise it just feels like a fairly normal episode. Arturis isn't a very good villain and I don't think Ray Wise did his best work under all that latex (he was better in his TNG episode.) I like the idea of Janeway having to face the consequences of the deal she made with the Borg, but she just kind of shrugs it off. I don't think any viewer would have thought the Dauntless was real, but the good thing is that Janeway doesn't really believe it either. It's a good episode for the Janeway/Seven relationship, but it's a shame they couldn't have done something new with the "a way home!" angle as we just get a few token "boy sure would be nice to be home!" scenes.
SCORE: 8/10
And it kind of sums up the whole season. Janeway/Seven is great. Mulgrew does her best work in the whole series and Jeri Ryan is certainly not "Barbie of Borg" as the Kes loving nerds claimed she was. Everyone else though? The Doctor is still good (though oddly not in 'Home and Fear' at all!?) and does get the best episode of the season, so that's fine. Tuvok is always reliable but a bit underused this season, with only one centric episode. Chakotay actually starts off the season well, but by the end is reduced to a lump of wood ('Unforgettable' certainly doesn't help.) B'Elanna is fine but Dawson's pregnancy probably limited what she could do. Neelix is...better than season 3? But still Neelix. Tom is sadly pretty lame now, with the attempt at character development in 'Vis a Vis' being pathetic. And Harry? Completely pointless. Did he get anything all season except having the hots for Seven and that two minutes in 'Demon' where he was a changed man? So yeah this is Voyager's best season yet but looking at the scores it's not THAT much better than the previous one, as any episode that isn't heavily about Seven is just another Voyager episode (with a few nice exceptions obviously!)
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Night - We start in black and white!? Harry Kim is being held prisoner by Ming th Merciless rip-off Chaotica and he's saved by Tom as Captain Proton. The Doctor walks in and ruins things. This is actually a great fun start to the season! Turns out the Holodeck is more important than ever to stop everyone going mad as for the last two months Voyager has been flying through a completely empty area of space. Stars aren't even visible for technobabble reasons. Chakotay seems to be in charge and Neelix asks if Janeway is ever going to show her face and lift morale. Tom and B'Elanna have a fight, Neelix has a panic attack. Things aren't good! The Doctor tells Neelix how he disappears into a void every time he's turned off so he understands what the crew are going through. Chakotay visits Janeway in her dark quarters where she stands in the dark. She locked herself up when they hit the "void" as it brought back her guilt at stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant. Harry plays the clarinet on the empty Bridge and Tuvok doesn't even give him into trouble. Tom introduces Seven to his Captain Proton program. She thinks it's dumb and kills a robot. Voyager drops out of warp and loses power. Neelix has another panic attack during the blackout and Chakotay saves him. Harry finds that an invisible ship has shut off their power so Tuvok launches a "warp flare" (it's a torpedo so not sure why he doesn't call it a "torpedo flare") to light it. An alien appears out of the dark in the Holodeck and Seven shoots it with her first raygun. Janeway finally comes out of her room to save Chuckles and Neelix from another. The aliens suddenly beam off of Voyager when another ship shows up and attacks their three ships. A kind of dirty looking alien (a Malon) asks to be compensated.
He seems friendly despite being covered in radiation. He warns Voyager that there's many of the invisible aliens ahead and they can't be detected. But the Malon have a spatial vortex that can take Voyager out of the void so that's fine! Janeway still wants to know why he's all radioactive. The Doctor reports to Janeway that the alien Seven shot is dying from radiation poisoning. The alien apologises for attacking Voyager (he thought they were Malon friends) and explains that the Malon have been poisoning their space. Chakotay asks Tuvok for advice on dealing with Janeway. Tuvok has been observing Janeway's guilt for four years and tells a story about another time Janeway put her life at risk to seeks redemption after making a mistake. The invisible aliens show up to pick up their dying friend. The Doctor finds that they are all dying of the radiation exposure. They can't close the vortex to keep the Malon out, but maybe Voyager can. The Malon tells Janeway that his people create a lot of waste and they have to dump it somewhere so why not in the void, eh? Janeway offers to teach their scientists how to purify antimatter. Chuckles and B'Elanna (who isn't wearing her jacket this season!) show the Malon the purifying technology. He says it's impressive but it would put his waste disposal company out of business so he's not going to use it, suckers! Janeway asks Chakotay if he's ready to be Captain. She makes a speech to the crew about how she's going to stay behind to collapse the vortex when Voyager leaves. Everyone disagrees with her and refuses to follow her orders. Janeway is pretty easily talked around and agrees to do it together. There's a decent action scene with Voyager riding a shockwave through the vortex (the invisible aliens show up to distract the Malon.) Janeway says "time to take out the garbage" because they're still trying to give her action hero lines. Stars appear in the sky again and everyone is happy.
It's a very good season opener. I like the whole atmosphere of the area of space with no stars. The aliens look fairly cool. The Malon are just standard assholes but the I do like the scene where he's like "haha, I'm not taking tech that'll put me out of business!" The weakness would be with the Janeway plot, even though it's actually still decent. It would have been better if we'd seen some sign of Janeway's guilt in the last four seasons. The scene where she's going to sacrifice herself but is quickly talked out of it is over a bit too fast. Still it's a very solid opening that uses the whole cast fairly well.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Drone - Seven is practicing her smile in a mirror. She and the Doctor go on a mission with Tom and B'Elanna in a shuttle. Seven suggests designing a new shuttle (foresahdowing!) because this one is so small. A plasma thing hits the shuttle and they have to be beamed back to Voyager. The Doc's mobile emitter is damaged and, with the crew unaware, infected by Seven's nanoprobes. The Doc hassles B'Elanna into fixing it first thing in the morning, even when she's taking a sonic shower (why do you need a towel in a sonic shower?) Seven detects Borg nearby. A never before seen Ensign spots the mobile emitter being weird and Borg and is hit by assimiliation tubes. He doesn't die but Seven and Tuvok find a Borg maturation chamber in the Science Lab...with a little baby drone growing inside it. Of course it grows super fast like always. In the next scene its the size of a six year old boy (but still in its chamber.) B'Elanna believes the Drone will be super adavanced because the Doc's emitter was from the 29th century (the emitter is in the Borg's brain now so I guess the Doc is never leaving Sickbay agan.) Seven thinks they should terminate the drone but Janeway of course wants to teach it to be an individual like she did for Seven. The drone comes out its chamber, fully grown, and Seven tells it to comply with her orders. The drone doesn't really understand until Seven links her mind with his. It won't break the link until she tells it he's hurting her. The way the drone walks in kind of camp? Seven lets it assimilate loads of Voyager's data so that it isn't dumb anymore. It seems fine with being an individual and doesn't go around threatening people like Seven used to.
Neelix shows the drone around and says he has to choose a name for himself. The drone is very curious about everything. The Doctor is nice to it but B'Elanna is sick of all these Borg. Seven appears proud by how smart the drone is. He tells Janeway that his name is "One." One is curious about the Borg and Seven is worried he'll be tempted to join the Collective. One thanks Seven for all she's doing for him and she continues to feel motherly emotions. One's unconsciously sends out a message to the Borg and they head to Voyager. Uh oh! Seven and One awaken to find Janeway and Tuvok and lots of security people pointing guns at them. Seven confirms that One didn't mean to send the message. Janeway and Seven show One what the Borg are all about. Janeway makes it clear that assimilation is bad and they have to keep One's advanced technology out of Borg hands. He asks Seven if she wants to rejoin the Borg and she says Voyager is her collective (aww.) A Borg sphere arrives. Seven and One hear the collective in their heads. She tells him to resist. He modifies Voyager's shields and phasers, but the Borg still get the upper hand. One wants to interface with the Borg and disrupt them from within. He's got his own personal transporter and beams over to the sphere to warn them off. He beats up some drones and flies the sphree into the weird nebula Voyager was investigating. The sphere is destroyed and One somehow survives. One lives long enough in Sickbay to say a sad farewell to Seven. He refuses to let the Doctor treat him because Voyager will be in danger while he lives. Seven begs him to let the Doc treat him as Ryan does that great thing where she lets emotion enter Seven's voice. Seven looks in the mirror again and this time her face is sad.
It's the classic Trek story of "new lifeform shows up/everyone loves it/it dies tragically." It's very good with Jeri Ryan and the guy playing One give excellent performances (Ryan is ever better than last season, where she was already great!) The only issue is how rushed it is. I mean they make great use of the 45 minutes, but it's halfway through before One has a personality. This would have made a much better two parter than trash like 'The Killing Game', or even a multipel episode arc. Also I think some people found One a bit weird for a Borg drone but he's MEANT TO BE so I don't really have a problem with that.
SCORE: 9/10
He seems friendly despite being covered in radiation. He warns Voyager that there's many of the invisible aliens ahead and they can't be detected. But the Malon have a spatial vortex that can take Voyager out of the void so that's fine! Janeway still wants to know why he's all radioactive. The Doctor reports to Janeway that the alien Seven shot is dying from radiation poisoning. The alien apologises for attacking Voyager (he thought they were Malon friends) and explains that the Malon have been poisoning their space. Chakotay asks Tuvok for advice on dealing with Janeway. Tuvok has been observing Janeway's guilt for four years and tells a story about another time Janeway put her life at risk to seeks redemption after making a mistake. The invisible aliens show up to pick up their dying friend. The Doctor finds that they are all dying of the radiation exposure. They can't close the vortex to keep the Malon out, but maybe Voyager can. The Malon tells Janeway that his people create a lot of waste and they have to dump it somewhere so why not in the void, eh? Janeway offers to teach their scientists how to purify antimatter. Chuckles and B'Elanna (who isn't wearing her jacket this season!) show the Malon the purifying technology. He says it's impressive but it would put his waste disposal company out of business so he's not going to use it, suckers! Janeway asks Chakotay if he's ready to be Captain. She makes a speech to the crew about how she's going to stay behind to collapse the vortex when Voyager leaves. Everyone disagrees with her and refuses to follow her orders. Janeway is pretty easily talked around and agrees to do it together. There's a decent action scene with Voyager riding a shockwave through the vortex (the invisible aliens show up to distract the Malon.) Janeway says "time to take out the garbage" because they're still trying to give her action hero lines. Stars appear in the sky again and everyone is happy.
It's a very good season opener. I like the whole atmosphere of the area of space with no stars. The aliens look fairly cool. The Malon are just standard assholes but the I do like the scene where he's like "haha, I'm not taking tech that'll put me out of business!" The weakness would be with the Janeway plot, even though it's actually still decent. It would have been better if we'd seen some sign of Janeway's guilt in the last four seasons. The scene where she's going to sacrifice herself but is quickly talked out of it is over a bit too fast. Still it's a very solid opening that uses the whole cast fairly well.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Drone - Seven is practicing her smile in a mirror. She and the Doctor go on a mission with Tom and B'Elanna in a shuttle. Seven suggests designing a new shuttle (foresahdowing!) because this one is so small. A plasma thing hits the shuttle and they have to be beamed back to Voyager. The Doc's mobile emitter is damaged and, with the crew unaware, infected by Seven's nanoprobes. The Doc hassles B'Elanna into fixing it first thing in the morning, even when she's taking a sonic shower (why do you need a towel in a sonic shower?) Seven detects Borg nearby. A never before seen Ensign spots the mobile emitter being weird and Borg and is hit by assimiliation tubes. He doesn't die but Seven and Tuvok find a Borg maturation chamber in the Science Lab...with a little baby drone growing inside it. Of course it grows super fast like always. In the next scene its the size of a six year old boy (but still in its chamber.) B'Elanna believes the Drone will be super adavanced because the Doc's emitter was from the 29th century (the emitter is in the Borg's brain now so I guess the Doc is never leaving Sickbay agan.) Seven thinks they should terminate the drone but Janeway of course wants to teach it to be an individual like she did for Seven. The drone comes out its chamber, fully grown, and Seven tells it to comply with her orders. The drone doesn't really understand until Seven links her mind with his. It won't break the link until she tells it he's hurting her. The way the drone walks in kind of camp? Seven lets it assimilate loads of Voyager's data so that it isn't dumb anymore. It seems fine with being an individual and doesn't go around threatening people like Seven used to.
Neelix shows the drone around and says he has to choose a name for himself. The drone is very curious about everything. The Doctor is nice to it but B'Elanna is sick of all these Borg. Seven appears proud by how smart the drone is. He tells Janeway that his name is "One." One is curious about the Borg and Seven is worried he'll be tempted to join the Collective. One thanks Seven for all she's doing for him and she continues to feel motherly emotions. One's unconsciously sends out a message to the Borg and they head to Voyager. Uh oh! Seven and One awaken to find Janeway and Tuvok and lots of security people pointing guns at them. Seven confirms that One didn't mean to send the message. Janeway and Seven show One what the Borg are all about. Janeway makes it clear that assimilation is bad and they have to keep One's advanced technology out of Borg hands. He asks Seven if she wants to rejoin the Borg and she says Voyager is her collective (aww.) A Borg sphere arrives. Seven and One hear the collective in their heads. She tells him to resist. He modifies Voyager's shields and phasers, but the Borg still get the upper hand. One wants to interface with the Borg and disrupt them from within. He's got his own personal transporter and beams over to the sphere to warn them off. He beats up some drones and flies the sphree into the weird nebula Voyager was investigating. The sphere is destroyed and One somehow survives. One lives long enough in Sickbay to say a sad farewell to Seven. He refuses to let the Doctor treat him because Voyager will be in danger while he lives. Seven begs him to let the Doc treat him as Ryan does that great thing where she lets emotion enter Seven's voice. Seven looks in the mirror again and this time her face is sad.
It's the classic Trek story of "new lifeform shows up/everyone loves it/it dies tragically." It's very good with Jeri Ryan and the guy playing One give excellent performances (Ryan is ever better than last season, where she was already great!) The only issue is how rushed it is. I mean they make great use of the 45 minutes, but it's halfway through before One has a personality. This would have made a much better two parter than trash like 'The Killing Game', or even a multipel episode arc. Also I think some people found One a bit weird for a Borg drone but he's MEANT TO BE so I don't really have a problem with that.
SCORE: 9/10
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
CAPTAIN PROTON OWNS
CAPTAIN PROTOWNS
CAPTAIN PROTOWNS
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
My friend posted this on FB yesterday so I can't link to the post, and it wasn't on Twitter so I'll just put it here. I thought it was cute.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Extreme Risk - B'Elanna does a dangerous skydive in the Holodeck with the safeties off like she's Tom Cruise or something. The Malon try to steal one of Voyager's probes so Janeway flies it into a gas giant, where it gets stuck. B'Elanna shows up late for the senior staff meeting and doesn't have any clever ideas like usual. Luckily Tom has an idea: he's designed a cool new shuttle (the Delta Flyer) and he wants to build it and fly it into the gas giant to rescue the probe. Everyone's excited except B'Elanna. Tom wants to make the Flyer look like a "hot rod" because the writers have decided "likes things from the 20th centry" is Tom's personality now. B'Elanna is obviously depressed but Tom doesn't get it and wants her to explain what's wrong. She goes to fight Cardies in the Holodeck instead. Some more Malon show up (the first ones died by the way) and threaten to steal the probe. Apparently te Malon's whole society revolves around toxic waste dumping. B'Elanna treats her own Holodeck injuries. She goes to talk to Neelix (wow, things must be bad) and asks for banana pancakes. They don't make her happy. Seven spies on the Malon and finds that they're building an (EVIL) shuttle of their own. Janeway says "looks like we have an old fashoned SPACE RACE!" Vorik makes one of his one line appearances because he's Jeri Taylor's son and they must have promised her they'd keep using him (CYNICAL WACKY MODE.) B'Elanna goes Holodeck self-harming again.
The Malon throw garbage at Voyager to annoy them. Chakotay finds B'Elanna passed out in the Holodeck. Janeway confronts B'Elanna with the fact that the Doctor has discovered she's suffered many injuries over the last few months and treated them herself. Janeway takes B'Elanna off the Delta Fyer project but she doesn't care. Janeway asks Chuckles and Tom to help B'Elanna. Chakotay goes to see it and she tries to act like nothing is wrong, but he asks her to show him her Holodeck progams. He drags her into the Holodeck where there's loads of dead Maquis, having been slaughtered by Cardassians. She claims to feel nothing when she looks at the Maquis corpses, and that she feels nothing at all, not for Tom or Chakotay or anything. Chakotay promises to help her figure out a way to stop harming herself, then the Malon attack. They're launching their own smelly shuttle. B'Elanna runs to Chakotay and says she wants to help get the Delta Flyer running. The DF takes out the Malon shuttle pretty easily and travels deeper into the gas giant to rescure the probe. The DF's hull suffers microfractures and B'Elanna...patches them up with sheets of metal. Okay. She builds a forcefield out of a phaser or something too. B'Elanna thanks Chakotay for making her face the holograms of her dead friends. She eats some B'Elanna pancakes and smiles.
Roxann Dawson is a good actress and certainly does a good job at playing a depressed version of B'Elanna here. It does make sense that all her friends being killed would still be affecting her months later. Using the Holodeck to self harm is a good Star Trek way to do a self harm story. Of course there's the usual Voyager problem of it just coming out of nowhere. The episode claims B'Elanna's been like this for months but she was perfectly normal last week. You could say she was hiding her depression but she doesn't attempt to hide it at all in this one so I don't think that works. The biggest problem though is how easily she gets over it. Chakotay dragging her into the Holodeck is a good scene, but at the end of it nothing is solved. Then she just runs over and says she wants to help the Delta Flyer and at the end she's fine again. It's not that easy! They should have shown she still had more work to do on her depression. The Malon just being evil trashmen is weird. So it's nice that Trek tried to do a depression episode they just could have done it better.
SCORE: 7/10
In The Flesh - BOOTHBY does some gardening in Starfleet Academy (which is full of Ferengi for some reason.) Chakotay is watching in the bushes taking photos with a space camera. Chakotay tries to get into Logistics but Boothby stops him. An attractive Starfleet lady named Valerie Archer (NO RELATION) played by Kate "Ellen Tighe" Vernon approches Chakotay at the bar. They witness an Ensign nearly "revert" and it seems all the Starfleet people here aren't actually human. Chakotay makes a date with her but Tuvok shows up to take him away. A security Engisn (played by Zach Galligan from GREMLINS!) approaches them so Tuvok has to nerve pinch his ass. They take him back to Voyager with them. The Doctor takes a DNA sample from him and I must note that Robert Picardo had sex with a lady Gremlin in Gremlins 2! Anyway the Ensign kills himself pretty quick so that was a short but memorable guest appearance by the star of Gremlins. Janeway suspects this fake Starfleet Academy is a training ground some aliens are using to plan an invasiion of Earth. The Doc causes the dead Ensign to revert to his true form...Species 8472! There's a staff meeting where everyone thinks Species 8472 are going to destroy Earth (Tuvok reminds us they promised to purge the galaxy of all life.) Janeway tests Chakotay to make sure he hasn't been replaced by an alien in a nice scene (it's good when they show Janeway being smart!) before Chakotay heads for his date with the 8472 (there's a nice scene with Tom and Harry teasing him about dating an alien too.) Seven is concerned that her nanoprobes don't instantly melt the dead 8472 but it's just a delayed reaction. The Doctor hopes they can find a non-violent solution. Chakotay and Archer start their date and head to a Vulcan night club where it's "Pon Farr night" (I REALLY DOUBT VULCANS WOULD HAVE THAT.)
Chakotay and Archer head back to her quarters for a nightcap. She talks about how humans are so violent yet create such beautiful art. She sexily strips down to inject herself with human DNA or whatever while Chakotay hacks her alien computer and it's a good tense moment. Chakotay probes her for informaton and asks if she's sure the humans are a threat. She uses the human alliance with the Borg as evidence. Chakotay and Archer kiss before he leaves, but she uses it as an opportunity to take a sampel of his DNA. The simulation turns from night to day to make it easier to catch Chakotay. He's chased by aliens posing as zombie Starfleet officers and it's KIND OF like something out of The Prisoner. The Delta Flyer can't beam him up. Janeway orders Seven to bring the Borg weapons online. Chakotay is brought to evil Boothby who questions him in a friendly but evil way. Boothby thnks that the Federation fleet will be on its way now Voyager knows about them. Janeway doesn't want to fire on 8472 but Seven does in the usual conflict. Chakotay tries to show Archer that humans aren't evil as she prepares to extract his bones or something. Janeway has a viewscreen showdown with Boothby. She tells him they have to try direct diplomacy and be honest with each other. He comes over to Voyager (with an Admiral and Archer and Chakotay with his bones intact) and says "targ manure!" a lot. Janeway has her "finger on the button" (Janeway says "finger on the trigger" but it's clear what they want you to think of) of the nanoprobe weapons but Boothby claims they have more simulations spread through the quadrant. Janeway orders the nanoprobe warheads disarmed to prove Voyager is no threat. They bring up the "your galaxy will be purged" line but 8472 just blow it off as trying to defend themselves. Nobody mentions "the weak shall perish" or Kes's visions of horror. Archer and Boothby are sympathetic to the humans and the Admiral thinks they've spent too long in human skin. Chakotay offers to make first contact again and do it right this tme. That solves all the problems really and various Voyager crewmembers beam down to the fake San Fransisco to make friends. Seven admits she would have fired on them and started another war. Boothby gives Janeway a flower and Chakotay asks Archer for a "tour of her realm" (is that what they're calling it these days!)
There are things about the very existence of this episode that make people angry and I can see why. 8472 are the most inhuman alien Trek has ever created at this point. They're completely CGI, not just men with stuff stuck to their foreheads. They're weird and scary and were still a genuine threat at this pont. This episode...has them taking human form and very easily acting like humans. It completely ends them as a threat and now they're just any other alien species. They're never seen again because there would be no reason to bring them back. AND YET, if you just watch this ON ITS OWN, AS AN EPISODE...it's really quite good! The writing and direction are quite sparky! Robert Beltran and Kate Vernon have great chemistry and their flirting is a lot more believable than the events of 'Unforgettable'. Boothby's actor isn't exactly convincing as an alien leader but he's pretty enertainng and works well as Kate Mulgrew. Don't get me wrong, the episode is ridiculous: how can 8472 be able to recreate San Fransisco so accurately but not know what the Federation is about? They can create Boothby right down to the smallest detail but they still think there's a chance Starfleet could be evil? Plus they totally ignore "the weak shall perish" and all that stuff. The cold war metaphor is really heavy handed and pretty out-dated. So...I get why people hate it but...I like this episode. It's fun! It's just a shame it kills off 8472 forever!
SCORE: 8.5/10
The Malon throw garbage at Voyager to annoy them. Chakotay finds B'Elanna passed out in the Holodeck. Janeway confronts B'Elanna with the fact that the Doctor has discovered she's suffered many injuries over the last few months and treated them herself. Janeway takes B'Elanna off the Delta Fyer project but she doesn't care. Janeway asks Chuckles and Tom to help B'Elanna. Chakotay goes to see it and she tries to act like nothing is wrong, but he asks her to show him her Holodeck progams. He drags her into the Holodeck where there's loads of dead Maquis, having been slaughtered by Cardassians. She claims to feel nothing when she looks at the Maquis corpses, and that she feels nothing at all, not for Tom or Chakotay or anything. Chakotay promises to help her figure out a way to stop harming herself, then the Malon attack. They're launching their own smelly shuttle. B'Elanna runs to Chakotay and says she wants to help get the Delta Flyer running. The DF takes out the Malon shuttle pretty easily and travels deeper into the gas giant to rescure the probe. The DF's hull suffers microfractures and B'Elanna...patches them up with sheets of metal. Okay. She builds a forcefield out of a phaser or something too. B'Elanna thanks Chakotay for making her face the holograms of her dead friends. She eats some B'Elanna pancakes and smiles.
Roxann Dawson is a good actress and certainly does a good job at playing a depressed version of B'Elanna here. It does make sense that all her friends being killed would still be affecting her months later. Using the Holodeck to self harm is a good Star Trek way to do a self harm story. Of course there's the usual Voyager problem of it just coming out of nowhere. The episode claims B'Elanna's been like this for months but she was perfectly normal last week. You could say she was hiding her depression but she doesn't attempt to hide it at all in this one so I don't think that works. The biggest problem though is how easily she gets over it. Chakotay dragging her into the Holodeck is a good scene, but at the end of it nothing is solved. Then she just runs over and says she wants to help the Delta Flyer and at the end she's fine again. It's not that easy! They should have shown she still had more work to do on her depression. The Malon just being evil trashmen is weird. So it's nice that Trek tried to do a depression episode they just could have done it better.
SCORE: 7/10
In The Flesh - BOOTHBY does some gardening in Starfleet Academy (which is full of Ferengi for some reason.) Chakotay is watching in the bushes taking photos with a space camera. Chakotay tries to get into Logistics but Boothby stops him. An attractive Starfleet lady named Valerie Archer (NO RELATION) played by Kate "Ellen Tighe" Vernon approches Chakotay at the bar. They witness an Ensign nearly "revert" and it seems all the Starfleet people here aren't actually human. Chakotay makes a date with her but Tuvok shows up to take him away. A security Engisn (played by Zach Galligan from GREMLINS!) approaches them so Tuvok has to nerve pinch his ass. They take him back to Voyager with them. The Doctor takes a DNA sample from him and I must note that Robert Picardo had sex with a lady Gremlin in Gremlins 2! Anyway the Ensign kills himself pretty quick so that was a short but memorable guest appearance by the star of Gremlins. Janeway suspects this fake Starfleet Academy is a training ground some aliens are using to plan an invasiion of Earth. The Doc causes the dead Ensign to revert to his true form...Species 8472! There's a staff meeting where everyone thinks Species 8472 are going to destroy Earth (Tuvok reminds us they promised to purge the galaxy of all life.) Janeway tests Chakotay to make sure he hasn't been replaced by an alien in a nice scene (it's good when they show Janeway being smart!) before Chakotay heads for his date with the 8472 (there's a nice scene with Tom and Harry teasing him about dating an alien too.) Seven is concerned that her nanoprobes don't instantly melt the dead 8472 but it's just a delayed reaction. The Doctor hopes they can find a non-violent solution. Chakotay and Archer start their date and head to a Vulcan night club where it's "Pon Farr night" (I REALLY DOUBT VULCANS WOULD HAVE THAT.)
Chakotay and Archer head back to her quarters for a nightcap. She talks about how humans are so violent yet create such beautiful art. She sexily strips down to inject herself with human DNA or whatever while Chakotay hacks her alien computer and it's a good tense moment. Chakotay probes her for informaton and asks if she's sure the humans are a threat. She uses the human alliance with the Borg as evidence. Chakotay and Archer kiss before he leaves, but she uses it as an opportunity to take a sampel of his DNA. The simulation turns from night to day to make it easier to catch Chakotay. He's chased by aliens posing as zombie Starfleet officers and it's KIND OF like something out of The Prisoner. The Delta Flyer can't beam him up. Janeway orders Seven to bring the Borg weapons online. Chakotay is brought to evil Boothby who questions him in a friendly but evil way. Boothby thnks that the Federation fleet will be on its way now Voyager knows about them. Janeway doesn't want to fire on 8472 but Seven does in the usual conflict. Chakotay tries to show Archer that humans aren't evil as she prepares to extract his bones or something. Janeway has a viewscreen showdown with Boothby. She tells him they have to try direct diplomacy and be honest with each other. He comes over to Voyager (with an Admiral and Archer and Chakotay with his bones intact) and says "targ manure!" a lot. Janeway has her "finger on the button" (Janeway says "finger on the trigger" but it's clear what they want you to think of) of the nanoprobe weapons but Boothby claims they have more simulations spread through the quadrant. Janeway orders the nanoprobe warheads disarmed to prove Voyager is no threat. They bring up the "your galaxy will be purged" line but 8472 just blow it off as trying to defend themselves. Nobody mentions "the weak shall perish" or Kes's visions of horror. Archer and Boothby are sympathetic to the humans and the Admiral thinks they've spent too long in human skin. Chakotay offers to make first contact again and do it right this tme. That solves all the problems really and various Voyager crewmembers beam down to the fake San Fransisco to make friends. Seven admits she would have fired on them and started another war. Boothby gives Janeway a flower and Chakotay asks Archer for a "tour of her realm" (is that what they're calling it these days!)
There are things about the very existence of this episode that make people angry and I can see why. 8472 are the most inhuman alien Trek has ever created at this point. They're completely CGI, not just men with stuff stuck to their foreheads. They're weird and scary and were still a genuine threat at this pont. This episode...has them taking human form and very easily acting like humans. It completely ends them as a threat and now they're just any other alien species. They're never seen again because there would be no reason to bring them back. AND YET, if you just watch this ON ITS OWN, AS AN EPISODE...it's really quite good! The writing and direction are quite sparky! Robert Beltran and Kate Vernon have great chemistry and their flirting is a lot more believable than the events of 'Unforgettable'. Boothby's actor isn't exactly convincing as an alien leader but he's pretty enertainng and works well as Kate Mulgrew. Don't get me wrong, the episode is ridiculous: how can 8472 be able to recreate San Fransisco so accurately but not know what the Federation is about? They can create Boothby right down to the smallest detail but they still think there's a chance Starfleet could be evil? Plus they totally ignore "the weak shall perish" and all that stuff. The cold war metaphor is really heavy handed and pretty out-dated. So...I get why people hate it but...I like this episode. It's fun! It's just a shame it kills off 8472 forever!
SCORE: 8.5/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Once Upon a Time - Naomi Wildman plays with "Flotter" (a water guy) and a tree guy in the Holodeck. Neelix is looking after her because Samantha is on the Delta Flyer with Tom and Tuvok, but the Flyer gets into trouble right after Samantha calls home. Voyager has to travel through an "ion storm" to get to it and Neelix decides it's best not to tell Naomi that Samantha is in trouble. There's an adorable bit where Naomi is scared of Seven. The Flyer crashlands on a rocky planet and Sam is seriously injured. Voyager tracks the Flyer to where it crashed. The Doctor teaches Naomi about cells. Naomi asks Neelix about his dead sisters and he avoids explaining death to her. He distracts her with more Flotter. Flotter is evaporated by fire which is kind of scary for a child's Holodeck game. Neelix drags her out. Harry replicates a Flotter doller for Naomi (he used to play Flotter when he was a kid.) Naomi figures out how to bring Flotter back despite Neelix babying her. She's noticed her mum is missing. Neelix puts her to bed and records a letter for his dead sister.
Neelix has one of his really literal dreams about dead sisters (once again this isn't necessary, we know how he feels already.) Neelix asks Seven if she misses her family (she barely remembers them.) She says Naomi will adapt. Janeway wants to tell Naomi the truth but Neelix yells at her that Naomi is too sensitive to handle it. He's obviously talking about himself! He has a total Neelix meltdown but Janeway tells him Naomi will get through losing her mother because she has Neelix. Tuvok tells Sam that Naomi will survive without her because Sam has been such a good mother and so on. Naomi sneaks onto the Bridge to see Neelix and finally finds out about the search party looking for the Flyer. Chakotay and Seven find the Flyer but discover they have to dig it out of the rock. Tom records a letter for B'Elanna and Sam does the same for her daughter. Naomi hides in the Holodec and Flotter calls Neelix a lying prick. Neelix tells her about his dead family. The DF is rescued at the last second. Samantha visits the Flotter program with Neelix and Naomi. Flotter recognises Sam from when she was a little girl and at first I thought "how is that possible!" but when you consider the tracking software used by Facebook and Google today it's not that unbelievable!
Remember that TNG episode where Alexander had a shitty Holodeck adventure with Lwaxanna? This is actually better than that, possibly because young Scarlett Pomers (who we'd know as "ScarPo" today if she'd become a big star! But she didn't) is a much better child actor than the boy who played Alexander. That doesn't mean I exactly enjoy the Flotter scenes but they're not as unbearable as they could have been. The stuff with Neelix not wanting to tell Naomi the truth starts out fine, but goes on too long. The episode ends up getting pretty repetitive with everyone sayng the same "Naomi will be okay with her Voyager family!" stuff. It actually really feels like Samantha is going to be killed off and maybe at some point the writers got cold feet and changed their minds? We never see her in the present day again after this so they might as well have killed her. The DF rescue stuff is completely routine, not bad but not interesting. This is proper, 5/10, average.
SCORE: 5/10
Timeless - Two people find Voyager buried under ice. It's an older Chakotay and Harry, and they soon head inside the icy ship. There's no power but lots of frozen dead bodies, including Janeway. A woman named Tessa beams up Seven's body. Harry gets the Doctor running and he's naturally confused. Chakotay tells him they're here to change history. There's a flashback scene to a celebration in Engineering. Voyager has got the quantum slipstream (presumably the one from 'Hope and Fear') up and running and is gonig to use it to go home. There's a great bit where Seven gets drunk and tells the Doc "we are as one!" Tom is the only one not celebrating as he's worried there's something wrong with the slipstream. He and Harry run 23 simulations and the ship is destroyed every time. Harry comes up with a solution: someone in a shuttle will travel ahead of Voyager and "map the slipstream." Janeway isn't sure at first but tells Chakotay over dinner he'll be in the shuttle with Harry. Chakotay thinks it's too risky but goes with her decision. Fifteen years in the future the bitter Harry tells the Doc they got home and all it took was killing everyone else. Harry blames himself but has come up with a plan to send a message back in time using Seven's Borginess and a stolen Borg time thingy. They're fugitives on the run from Starfleet on the stolen Delta Flyer, along with Chakotay's girlfriend Tessa. Chakotay tells Tessa they don't have to change the past if she doesn't want them to, as it'll mean their relationship will have never happened. She's fully commited to his cause though and helps him go through with it.
Harry tells the Doc about coming home. He was never able to move on and spent years searching for Voyager on deep space missions before leaving Starfleet. Doc wonders if the altered timeline could be worse but Harry thinks it'll be better no matter what because Voyager will survive. A Starfleet starship finds them. In the past we see Chakotay and Harry in the Flyer as Voyager prepars to jump to slipstream. Captain La Forge(!) of the starship Challenger speaks to Chakotay in the present day, telling him he can't let him alter time. He doesn't want fifteen years of history being erased. Voyager goes into slipstream in the past. The future DF is no match for the Challenger so Harry and Doc have to work fast. Voyager starts to have trouble and loses contact with the DF. Future Harry sends his message with the new calcuations to Seven just four minutes before Voyager is set to be destroyed. Past Seven enters the corrections and Voyager drops out of slipstream. The DF can't go back for them. Voyager has to crash land...on the ice planet. Everyone dies and history isn't changed. Oops! Future Harry knows he failed because he hasn't faded out of existence. The future DF is about to be destroyed by Geordi and Harry has a breakdown as he doesn't know what to do. The Doctor tells him to stop whining and changed history. He can't come up with the right calculations to get Voyager home, but he can warn them to turn off the slipstream before it goes wrong. The DF blows up (Geordi offers to beam them out but they refuse) just as Harry sends his new message. Voyager is saved in the past and Harry tells Janeway he sent no message to Seven. Janeway tells Harry that she's found out his future self sent the message. He doesn't know how he could have sent the message from a timeline that now will never exist, but Janeway says all that matters is he came through. And future Harry also sent a message to past Harry which he watches.
It's Voyager's hundredth episode and it's one of its best. Yes it's a bit like 'All Good Things...' and various other episodes, but that doesn't matter if it's done this well. It's Garrett Wang's best performance (ever, in anything) and unlike 'Year of Hell' it avoids feelnig pointless by having past Harry learn what his future self did. IF ONLY IT WAS THIS GODO EVERY WEEK, EH.
SCORE: 10/10
Neelix has one of his really literal dreams about dead sisters (once again this isn't necessary, we know how he feels already.) Neelix asks Seven if she misses her family (she barely remembers them.) She says Naomi will adapt. Janeway wants to tell Naomi the truth but Neelix yells at her that Naomi is too sensitive to handle it. He's obviously talking about himself! He has a total Neelix meltdown but Janeway tells him Naomi will get through losing her mother because she has Neelix. Tuvok tells Sam that Naomi will survive without her because Sam has been such a good mother and so on. Naomi sneaks onto the Bridge to see Neelix and finally finds out about the search party looking for the Flyer. Chakotay and Seven find the Flyer but discover they have to dig it out of the rock. Tom records a letter for B'Elanna and Sam does the same for her daughter. Naomi hides in the Holodec and Flotter calls Neelix a lying prick. Neelix tells her about his dead family. The DF is rescued at the last second. Samantha visits the Flotter program with Neelix and Naomi. Flotter recognises Sam from when she was a little girl and at first I thought "how is that possible!" but when you consider the tracking software used by Facebook and Google today it's not that unbelievable!
Remember that TNG episode where Alexander had a shitty Holodeck adventure with Lwaxanna? This is actually better than that, possibly because young Scarlett Pomers (who we'd know as "ScarPo" today if she'd become a big star! But she didn't) is a much better child actor than the boy who played Alexander. That doesn't mean I exactly enjoy the Flotter scenes but they're not as unbearable as they could have been. The stuff with Neelix not wanting to tell Naomi the truth starts out fine, but goes on too long. The episode ends up getting pretty repetitive with everyone sayng the same "Naomi will be okay with her Voyager family!" stuff. It actually really feels like Samantha is going to be killed off and maybe at some point the writers got cold feet and changed their minds? We never see her in the present day again after this so they might as well have killed her. The DF rescue stuff is completely routine, not bad but not interesting. This is proper, 5/10, average.
SCORE: 5/10
Timeless - Two people find Voyager buried under ice. It's an older Chakotay and Harry, and they soon head inside the icy ship. There's no power but lots of frozen dead bodies, including Janeway. A woman named Tessa beams up Seven's body. Harry gets the Doctor running and he's naturally confused. Chakotay tells him they're here to change history. There's a flashback scene to a celebration in Engineering. Voyager has got the quantum slipstream (presumably the one from 'Hope and Fear') up and running and is gonig to use it to go home. There's a great bit where Seven gets drunk and tells the Doc "we are as one!" Tom is the only one not celebrating as he's worried there's something wrong with the slipstream. He and Harry run 23 simulations and the ship is destroyed every time. Harry comes up with a solution: someone in a shuttle will travel ahead of Voyager and "map the slipstream." Janeway isn't sure at first but tells Chakotay over dinner he'll be in the shuttle with Harry. Chakotay thinks it's too risky but goes with her decision. Fifteen years in the future the bitter Harry tells the Doc they got home and all it took was killing everyone else. Harry blames himself but has come up with a plan to send a message back in time using Seven's Borginess and a stolen Borg time thingy. They're fugitives on the run from Starfleet on the stolen Delta Flyer, along with Chakotay's girlfriend Tessa. Chakotay tells Tessa they don't have to change the past if she doesn't want them to, as it'll mean their relationship will have never happened. She's fully commited to his cause though and helps him go through with it.
Harry tells the Doc about coming home. He was never able to move on and spent years searching for Voyager on deep space missions before leaving Starfleet. Doc wonders if the altered timeline could be worse but Harry thinks it'll be better no matter what because Voyager will survive. A Starfleet starship finds them. In the past we see Chakotay and Harry in the Flyer as Voyager prepars to jump to slipstream. Captain La Forge(!) of the starship Challenger speaks to Chakotay in the present day, telling him he can't let him alter time. He doesn't want fifteen years of history being erased. Voyager goes into slipstream in the past. The future DF is no match for the Challenger so Harry and Doc have to work fast. Voyager starts to have trouble and loses contact with the DF. Future Harry sends his message with the new calcuations to Seven just four minutes before Voyager is set to be destroyed. Past Seven enters the corrections and Voyager drops out of slipstream. The DF can't go back for them. Voyager has to crash land...on the ice planet. Everyone dies and history isn't changed. Oops! Future Harry knows he failed because he hasn't faded out of existence. The future DF is about to be destroyed by Geordi and Harry has a breakdown as he doesn't know what to do. The Doctor tells him to stop whining and changed history. He can't come up with the right calculations to get Voyager home, but he can warn them to turn off the slipstream before it goes wrong. The DF blows up (Geordi offers to beam them out but they refuse) just as Harry sends his new message. Voyager is saved in the past and Harry tells Janeway he sent no message to Seven. Janeway tells Harry that she's found out his future self sent the message. He doesn't know how he could have sent the message from a timeline that now will never exist, but Janeway says all that matters is he came through. And future Harry also sent a message to past Harry which he watches.
It's Voyager's hundredth episode and it's one of its best. Yes it's a bit like 'All Good Things...' and various other episodes, but that doesn't matter if it's done this well. It's Garrett Wang's best performance (ever, in anything) and unlike 'Year of Hell' it avoids feelnig pointless by having past Harry learn what his future self did. IF ONLY IT WAS THIS GODO EVERY WEEK, EH.
SCORE: 10/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Infinite Regress - Seven coms out of her regeneraton early as she hears anguished voices in her head. She starts eating food in an angry way and sees herself as a Klingon in the mirror. Neelix is angry someone is stealing his food and he doesn't now who because cameras don't exist? Seven catches Naomi stalking her and calls her "subunit of Ensign Samantha Wildman." It's cute. Naomi wants Seven to teach her how to be perfect like the Borg. Seven suddenly starts talking like a little girl and plays that game I can't spell the name of with Naomi. B'Elanna finds a Borg frequency in space and it's obviously what's making Seven weird. She turns into a Klingon male and tries to rape B'Elanna because that's what Klingon men do. Tuvok finds her as Seven shifts personality into a Vulcan, then back to the rapey Klingon. The Doctor reports that new personalities have appeared in Seven's head, probably caused by the signal from a nearby destroyed Borg cube (it's "Borg multiple personality disorder" basically.) Naomi does a drawing to make Seven feel better. Seven and the Doc find recordings she's made while in her different personalities. Voyager comes to the destroyed cube and finds its "vinculum" still functionng. It's what's fucking with Seven so Janeway reluctantly beams it onboard. They find that the vinculum has been infected with a hostile organism. Seven finds that some aliens (we just get their Borg number not their name) are reponsible and Janeway looks for them. Then Seven turns into a Ferengi.
Seven keeps jumping personalities and becomes a woman who was supposed to meet her husband at Wolf 359 (bad luck!) Why does she only turn into species that the viewer are familiar with rather than random DQ aliens? Seven is having a hard time coping with the changes but Janeway tells her to hold on. B'Elanna tries to shut downt he vinculum but it adapts to her efforts and Seven gets even more ill. Tuvok wants to mind meld with Seven to bring her personality back to the surface. The Doctor thinks it's too risky and the mind meld is just Vulcan mumbo jumbo (what about when it saved Tuvok's life in 'Flasback'?) The aliens who infected the vinculum show up. You have to see their costumes, guys. They explain that they intentionally infected the cube (wasn't that obvious?) and planned to spread it to more cubes but Janeway ruined their plans. They threaten to shoot Voyager if Janeway doesn't put the vinculum back where it was. Seven tells the Doc she wants to do the mind meld and thanks him for his patience. The voices are breaking her brain. Tuvok melds and finds himself in Borg cube in Seven's brain, being jostled by shouting people. He searches for Seven but it's hard going. She keeps shifting personalities in the real world. The alien jerks attack Voyager at the same time because why not. Tuvok shouting "SEVEN!" goes on for too long while the "shields at 8%!" stuff is as routine as it gets. Tuvok saves Seven and Janeway beams the vinculum into space and flies off. Seven is thankful to the crew and hangs out with Naomi again.
It's an excuse to have Jeri Ryan play multiple characters and little else. She is very good at doing that, but none of the characters she shifts to have any depth. It's just quick blast of "now she's a Klingon! Now she's a Ferengi!" It's fun for a while (the scene with her playing with Naomi is sweet) but there's just not enough plot. The episode ends up just being Seven shifting characters for ages with a sore head and then Tuvok shouts "SEVEN!" in a Borg cube for ten minutes. They could have done an actual story with one of her personalities instead. So I don't know how to rate it. Jeri Ryan is very good and some of it was fun, but I got bored about halfway through and just wanted it to end.
SCORE: 6.5/10
Nothing Human - The Doctor bores the crew with a boring slideshow which isn't as funny as Data doing poetry about his cat. The ship is hit by an energy wave that shakes it about a bit. It downloads a screeching alien voice to Voyager's computer. It leads Voyager to a damaged ship and Janeway beams an injured lifeform (it's not humanoid, hurray!) over to Sickbay. The lfeform quickly jumps onto B'Elanna's chest and injects its tenetacles into her. It can't be beamed away without killing B'Elanna. The Doctor can't treat it because he doesn't know everything. Isn't he supposed to have the sum total of all Starfleet's medical knowledge in his program? Isn't that the point of him? Janeway decides to create a consultant hologram to help the Doctor. Another doctor, basically. Why can't they just put the information in this new hologram into the Doctor? Why would a computer program need to "consult" when it can just download information? Also remember how hard it was for Tom and Harry to make a new Doctor last season? They gave up because it was impossible. Well, here Harry makes one in two minutes by giving the computer a couple of instructions. It's based on a Cardassian named Crell, an expert on non-human lifeforms. The Doc is instantly impressed by Crell. A never before seen Bajoran (it's not the guy from 'Learning Curve' and you're wrong if you think it is) works with Seven to download information from the alien ship but it blows up. B'Elanna is angry when she sees that the consulting hologram is a Cardassian because she thinks they're all evil. The Doc and Crell recreate the lab he had on Bajor. Crell talks about how he experimented with non-traditional methods to cure a disease and the Doc is still impressed. They create a hologram of the alien and look inside it using an evil looking scalpel (because Cardassians are evil.) The hologram squeals in pain when they cut it. Wait, so why do they even have to cut it if it's a hologram? Can't they just ask the computer to let them look inside it? The computer createed its internal organs so why would they have to physically opne it to look at them? Crell's hologram cuts out and Convenient Bajoran helps Harry get it back online. B'Elanna tells the Doctor that all Cardassians are bad. Convenient Bajoran recognises Crell and claims he killed his whole family and thousands of others by doing experiments on them on Bajor.
The Bajoran tells Chakotay and the Doctor the full story. Every Bajoran knew about Crell, apparently, but that informatiion never made it into Starfleet's database even though Crell's personality was accuratuely recreated. The Bajoran wants Crell's hologram destroyed and all informatiion in his database deleted. B'Elanna tells Tom she won't let Crell treat her. Harry and Seven find evidence that the Bajoran's accusations are true. The Doctor tells the Crell hologram what they've learned. Crell brings up that he's not aware of any of this. The Doctor says they'll have to delete Crell but Crell argues that there's always a price to pay for the advancement of medical science. The knowledge is already there and should be used to save B'Elanna's life. Convenient Bajoran tries to resign his commission because he objects to the Doctor trying to save B'Elanna's life (okay he doesn't say that.) Chakotay tells him to be reasonable but the Bajoran just flips out and says they'd be no better than Crell if they used his research to save B'Elanna. There's a senior staff meeting and Paris argues that they have to save B'Elanna. Tuvok says there's a logical argument not to treat her. Paris and Chakotay shout at each other but Janeway steps in and says they have to go ahead with saving B'Elanna's llfe. No shit! Voyager finds the screeching aliens while the Doctor and Crell do surgery on B'Elanna. They are successful and beam the alien back to its ship. Janeway tells the Doctor he's responsible deciding if Crell's hologram should be deleted or not. B'Elanna is angry at Janeway for letting her be treated against her wishes. Janeway tells her to fucking get over it. Crell still thinks he and the Doctor can be friends but but Doc deletes h8im.
Okay so you can see I had lots of NERD COMPLAINTS about the way the Crell hologram is created. It's just stupid! Upload his data to the Doctor! BUT I've been able to get over those nerd complaints in the past if the episode is good enough. Is this one good enough? Not really! Okay there's some good debates on medical ethics between the Doctor and Crell. And the question of if we should use medical research that comes from Nazis (sorry, "Cardies") is a good one (even though Janeway just kind of sidesteps it by saying "treat B'Elanna then let the Doctor decide!") But there's too much that just pisses me off. For exmple, we see B'Elanna being instantly racist when she sees Crell. She says that every Cardassian is evil and can't be trusted. Then she's proven right! Crell IS evil so B'Elanna's racism is justified and it's like the episode is saying racism is right when it's directed at Cardassians. Then there's Convenient Bajoran. Sure, his whole family died in a death camp, but I still fucking hate him for that scene where he's shouting at Chakotay that B'Elanna has to die (again, not his exact words.) We never see him again after that either or find out of he resigned his commission. B'Elanna herself is pretty annoying too. Really anyone arguing that they shouldn't treat B'Elanna is a psychopath. There's no way if this happened in real life that the doctor would say "okay let's throw out the life saving data and let the patient die!" So yeah there's good classic Star Trek debate ethic stuff here, but it's just not good enoguh.
SCORE: 6/10
Seven keeps jumping personalities and becomes a woman who was supposed to meet her husband at Wolf 359 (bad luck!) Why does she only turn into species that the viewer are familiar with rather than random DQ aliens? Seven is having a hard time coping with the changes but Janeway tells her to hold on. B'Elanna tries to shut downt he vinculum but it adapts to her efforts and Seven gets even more ill. Tuvok wants to mind meld with Seven to bring her personality back to the surface. The Doctor thinks it's too risky and the mind meld is just Vulcan mumbo jumbo (what about when it saved Tuvok's life in 'Flasback'?) The aliens who infected the vinculum show up. You have to see their costumes, guys. They explain that they intentionally infected the cube (wasn't that obvious?) and planned to spread it to more cubes but Janeway ruined their plans. They threaten to shoot Voyager if Janeway doesn't put the vinculum back where it was. Seven tells the Doc she wants to do the mind meld and thanks him for his patience. The voices are breaking her brain. Tuvok melds and finds himself in Borg cube in Seven's brain, being jostled by shouting people. He searches for Seven but it's hard going. She keeps shifting personalities in the real world. The alien jerks attack Voyager at the same time because why not. Tuvok shouting "SEVEN!" goes on for too long while the "shields at 8%!" stuff is as routine as it gets. Tuvok saves Seven and Janeway beams the vinculum into space and flies off. Seven is thankful to the crew and hangs out with Naomi again.
It's an excuse to have Jeri Ryan play multiple characters and little else. She is very good at doing that, but none of the characters she shifts to have any depth. It's just quick blast of "now she's a Klingon! Now she's a Ferengi!" It's fun for a while (the scene with her playing with Naomi is sweet) but there's just not enough plot. The episode ends up just being Seven shifting characters for ages with a sore head and then Tuvok shouts "SEVEN!" in a Borg cube for ten minutes. They could have done an actual story with one of her personalities instead. So I don't know how to rate it. Jeri Ryan is very good and some of it was fun, but I got bored about halfway through and just wanted it to end.
SCORE: 6.5/10
Nothing Human - The Doctor bores the crew with a boring slideshow which isn't as funny as Data doing poetry about his cat. The ship is hit by an energy wave that shakes it about a bit. It downloads a screeching alien voice to Voyager's computer. It leads Voyager to a damaged ship and Janeway beams an injured lifeform (it's not humanoid, hurray!) over to Sickbay. The lfeform quickly jumps onto B'Elanna's chest and injects its tenetacles into her. It can't be beamed away without killing B'Elanna. The Doctor can't treat it because he doesn't know everything. Isn't he supposed to have the sum total of all Starfleet's medical knowledge in his program? Isn't that the point of him? Janeway decides to create a consultant hologram to help the Doctor. Another doctor, basically. Why can't they just put the information in this new hologram into the Doctor? Why would a computer program need to "consult" when it can just download information? Also remember how hard it was for Tom and Harry to make a new Doctor last season? They gave up because it was impossible. Well, here Harry makes one in two minutes by giving the computer a couple of instructions. It's based on a Cardassian named Crell, an expert on non-human lifeforms. The Doc is instantly impressed by Crell. A never before seen Bajoran (it's not the guy from 'Learning Curve' and you're wrong if you think it is) works with Seven to download information from the alien ship but it blows up. B'Elanna is angry when she sees that the consulting hologram is a Cardassian because she thinks they're all evil. The Doc and Crell recreate the lab he had on Bajor. Crell talks about how he experimented with non-traditional methods to cure a disease and the Doc is still impressed. They create a hologram of the alien and look inside it using an evil looking scalpel (because Cardassians are evil.) The hologram squeals in pain when they cut it. Wait, so why do they even have to cut it if it's a hologram? Can't they just ask the computer to let them look inside it? The computer createed its internal organs so why would they have to physically opne it to look at them? Crell's hologram cuts out and Convenient Bajoran helps Harry get it back online. B'Elanna tells the Doctor that all Cardassians are bad. Convenient Bajoran recognises Crell and claims he killed his whole family and thousands of others by doing experiments on them on Bajor.
The Bajoran tells Chakotay and the Doctor the full story. Every Bajoran knew about Crell, apparently, but that informatiion never made it into Starfleet's database even though Crell's personality was accuratuely recreated. The Bajoran wants Crell's hologram destroyed and all informatiion in his database deleted. B'Elanna tells Tom she won't let Crell treat her. Harry and Seven find evidence that the Bajoran's accusations are true. The Doctor tells the Crell hologram what they've learned. Crell brings up that he's not aware of any of this. The Doctor says they'll have to delete Crell but Crell argues that there's always a price to pay for the advancement of medical science. The knowledge is already there and should be used to save B'Elanna's life. Convenient Bajoran tries to resign his commission because he objects to the Doctor trying to save B'Elanna's life (okay he doesn't say that.) Chakotay tells him to be reasonable but the Bajoran just flips out and says they'd be no better than Crell if they used his research to save B'Elanna. There's a senior staff meeting and Paris argues that they have to save B'Elanna. Tuvok says there's a logical argument not to treat her. Paris and Chakotay shout at each other but Janeway steps in and says they have to go ahead with saving B'Elanna's llfe. No shit! Voyager finds the screeching aliens while the Doctor and Crell do surgery on B'Elanna. They are successful and beam the alien back to its ship. Janeway tells the Doctor he's responsible deciding if Crell's hologram should be deleted or not. B'Elanna is angry at Janeway for letting her be treated against her wishes. Janeway tells her to fucking get over it. Crell still thinks he and the Doctor can be friends but but Doc deletes h8im.
Okay so you can see I had lots of NERD COMPLAINTS about the way the Crell hologram is created. It's just stupid! Upload his data to the Doctor! BUT I've been able to get over those nerd complaints in the past if the episode is good enough. Is this one good enough? Not really! Okay there's some good debates on medical ethics between the Doctor and Crell. And the question of if we should use medical research that comes from Nazis (sorry, "Cardies") is a good one (even though Janeway just kind of sidesteps it by saying "treat B'Elanna then let the Doctor decide!") But there's too much that just pisses me off. For exmple, we see B'Elanna being instantly racist when she sees Crell. She says that every Cardassian is evil and can't be trusted. Then she's proven right! Crell IS evil so B'Elanna's racism is justified and it's like the episode is saying racism is right when it's directed at Cardassians. Then there's Convenient Bajoran. Sure, his whole family died in a death camp, but I still fucking hate him for that scene where he's shouting at Chakotay that B'Elanna has to die (again, not his exact words.) We never see him again after that either or find out of he resigned his commission. B'Elanna herself is pretty annoying too. Really anyone arguing that they shouldn't treat B'Elanna is a psychopath. There's no way if this happened in real life that the doctor would say "okay let's throw out the life saving data and let the patient die!" So yeah there's good classic Star Trek debate ethic stuff here, but it's just not good enoguh.
SCORE: 6/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Thirty Days - The episode starts with Tom Paris reduced in rank to Ensign and sentenced to thirty days solitary confinement in the brig. That's pretty serious! Neelix brings him Leola Root for dinner (he really is being punished!) and Tom narrates a letter to his father Admiral Paris explaining what happened. We flashback to Tom and Harry on the Holodeck with the Delaney Sisters (the only time they're ever seen because the show hates recurring character) playing Captain Proton. It's just an attempt to get Harry laid but he's into the wrong twin. Vyoager comes across a big round ocean floating in space and soon meets the dudes who live there. Tom is fascinated by the idea of people living under the sea and concerned to hear that the ocean is shrinking for some reason. The aliens need to travel to the centre of the planet to find out what's wrong and Tom says he can take them. He's apparently been obsessed with the ocean his whole life but never mentioned it before (his father didn't want him joining the boring sea navy instead of the space navy.) Tom convinces Janeway to let him take Harry, Seven and one of the aliens to the centre of the ocean in the Delta Flyer. They first visit the undersea city of the aliens. Janeway brings the alien consul guy the sad news that their ocean could suffer complete loss of containment in five years. The DF goes deeper and finds an ancient containment structure, predating the aliens' arrival at the ocean. They're attacked by a giant electric eel. In the present day somebody attacks Voyager and Tom's prison guard runs off to battle stations (why does he need someone guarding him constantly anyway?)
Tom tries to get gossip from the Doc but he's not talking so we flashback again to a leaky DF stuck under the ocean after the eel fight. They investigate the containment reactor thing while they're there and give it a power transfer which stops the planet losing anymore water. Tom finds that the ocean was once part of another planet and moved here for some reason. Tom doesn't think the reactor is responsible for the loss of containment and it must be the drilling operations of the alien dudes. Tom has a dream where he's a little boy in Voyager's brig being told off by his father. Harry is finally allowed a conjugal visit but just tells Tom off for not finishing the letter to his dad. Voyager helps out the aliens with some new technology but the consul guy blows off Tom and the other allien when they try to tell him how bad the crisis is and how the ocean will be lost soon (oh this is a climate change episode, I get it.) The consul tells Tom his family have lived in the ocean for ten generations so he knows more about it. Tom tells Janeway they have to do something but Janeway tells him they can't because of the Prime Directive. They've givent he aliens all the information they have and it's up to them to act on it. B'Elanna tells Tom she's proud of him for standing up for a cause and inspires him to run after his nerdy alien friend. He tells Tom the only way to save the ocean is to take the mining operations completely offline. Tom and the nerd steal the DF and go under the ocean. Tom ignores Janeway's pleas for him to return but Chakotay (he's still in this show!) compes up with a plan to use a torpedo as a depth charge. Janeway gives Tom a final warning but he ignores her. She manages to stop the Flyer destroying the mining operation and disable it. Janeway busts him down to Harry's rank like in the teaser, though this time we get to see Tom speak up: he was the only one who could help so he tried. He doesn't mind going to jail this time because he broke the rules for a reason. Tuvok frees him after thirty days in the present day. Tom completes the letter to his Dadmiral.
Tom hasn't really had a proper character episode for ages, so this is a good episode for him. It's just about believable that Tom would wnat to do something worthwhile (perhaps thnking about how his father used to tell him he was wasting his life) and choose to help the aliens. The problem is that the backstory here about him loving the ocean feels really obviously invented and the episode doesn't feel as natural as, say, a Seven of Nine episode would (since the writers have a better handle on her character because she's the best character.) But it is a good episode and the big ocean floating in space is pretty interesting.
SCORE: 8/10
Counterpoint - Voyager is inspected by Devore inspectors (they're basically space Nazis) searching for telepaths. This has been happening for weeks and Janeway is familar with the chief inspector and asshole Kashyk (his name is kind of like the Wookiee planet!) who plays classical music during the thorough inspection. Kashyk is smug but tries to make friendly chit chat with Janeway. He's found the names of four telepaths onboard: Tuvok, Vorik, Suder and some other Betazoid. WHAT ABOUT STADI? And Kes? Janeway claims all four are dead anyway. Kashyk lets Voyager away with a minor infraction, much to his second in command Prax's annoyance. When the Devore leave, Tuvok, Vorik, never before seen Betazoid and a bunch alien refugees are brought out of suspended animation in the transporter. Voyager is smuggling the refugees to a wormhole to escape Devore space, but the Doctor reports that if they go into transporter suspensioin again some of them may die. Neelix reads Flotter stories to telephatic children who already know how the story will go. Voyager is approached by Kashyk on his own and out of uniform. He tells Janeway he wants to defect and tries to prove himself by telling her the nebula they're heading to is a trap the Devore use to capture telepaths. He knows all about the telepaths in the transporter and will help them escape if Voyager takes him with them. Kashyk gives up more info. Janeway asks the telepath leader if he can be trusted but he doesn't know and Devore are trained to guard their thoughts from telepaths. They need to find a scientist who knows where the wormhole is. Janeway questions Kashyk on why he's defecting now. Voyager finds the wormhole expert but he tries to run away. Janeway just beams him onboard.
Kashyk helps Janeway get the wormhole expert to reveal its location (it's an unfixed wormhole though.) Janeway and Kashyk obviously enjoy working with each other. They listen to music as they try to come up with a way to predict the wormhole's location. Janeway (somehow) uses the counterpoint in the music as a metaphor for the way in which they can find the wormhole ("like putting too much air in a balloon!") They look at space lights together. He reveals he knows about the Prime Directive and that Janeway is breaking it to help the telepaths (is it really breaking it to help someone who asks for help?) Kashyk tells a story of a little telepath girl he once sent to her death. Kashyk invites Janeway to join him in her quarters but she declines (there's a funny bit with the security guard trying to pretend he wasn't listening.) Voyager heads for the wormhole's location as two Devore warships head towards them. Kashyk tells Janeway he'll go back to the warships to guarantee Voyager's safety by taking command. Janeway tries to talk him out of it and admits she was thinking of asking him to stay after they get through the wormhole. He says he doesn't think he would have fit in. Janeway is obviously sad to be losing him. Tuvok even tells him "live long and prosper" so you know he's defnitely a good guy now! Before Kashyk leaves Janeway tells him they'll wait for him at the wormhole as long as possible. They kiss! Later the Devore arrive at Voyager with Kashyk back in full space Nazi mode complete with Prax. He turns back into nice Kashyk when Prax leaves the room and Janeway tells him where the wormhole is and how to open it. Kashyk calls Prax back in and tells him how to find the transporter suspended telepaths. He was evil all along! Janeway congratulates him on a great performance. Kashyk fires on the wormhole...then realises it isn't there. Janeway tricked him! The telepaths aren't in the transporter buffer either. Janeway changes the music to Mahler number 1 to show she's in control, bitch. The telepaths go through the wormhole in two shuttles so that's another two Voyager has lost! Prax wants Voyager sent to a detention centre but Kashyk lets them go free because he's been outsmarted. Janeway looks sad on the Bridge when he leaves.
It's one of the best episodes of the season for sure and one of the best Janeway centric episodes of the whole series. Mulgrew and the guy who plays Kashyk (yep I forgot to look up his name) have great chemistry and even though you think he's PROBABLY still evil it would have been believable if it went either way. Janeway outsmarting him is very satisfying. The only thing I'm not sure about is Janeway looking sad at the end. Did she still have some hope that Kashyk was secretly a good guy, or that his feelings for her were real? Given how in control she just was I can see this being viewed as moment of weakness. But Starfleet Captains need love so it makes sense that she'd be a bit sad I guess.
SCORE: 9/10
Tom tries to get gossip from the Doc but he's not talking so we flashback again to a leaky DF stuck under the ocean after the eel fight. They investigate the containment reactor thing while they're there and give it a power transfer which stops the planet losing anymore water. Tom finds that the ocean was once part of another planet and moved here for some reason. Tom doesn't think the reactor is responsible for the loss of containment and it must be the drilling operations of the alien dudes. Tom has a dream where he's a little boy in Voyager's brig being told off by his father. Harry is finally allowed a conjugal visit but just tells Tom off for not finishing the letter to his dad. Voyager helps out the aliens with some new technology but the consul guy blows off Tom and the other allien when they try to tell him how bad the crisis is and how the ocean will be lost soon (oh this is a climate change episode, I get it.) The consul tells Tom his family have lived in the ocean for ten generations so he knows more about it. Tom tells Janeway they have to do something but Janeway tells him they can't because of the Prime Directive. They've givent he aliens all the information they have and it's up to them to act on it. B'Elanna tells Tom she's proud of him for standing up for a cause and inspires him to run after his nerdy alien friend. He tells Tom the only way to save the ocean is to take the mining operations completely offline. Tom and the nerd steal the DF and go under the ocean. Tom ignores Janeway's pleas for him to return but Chakotay (he's still in this show!) compes up with a plan to use a torpedo as a depth charge. Janeway gives Tom a final warning but he ignores her. She manages to stop the Flyer destroying the mining operation and disable it. Janeway busts him down to Harry's rank like in the teaser, though this time we get to see Tom speak up: he was the only one who could help so he tried. He doesn't mind going to jail this time because he broke the rules for a reason. Tuvok frees him after thirty days in the present day. Tom completes the letter to his Dadmiral.
Tom hasn't really had a proper character episode for ages, so this is a good episode for him. It's just about believable that Tom would wnat to do something worthwhile (perhaps thnking about how his father used to tell him he was wasting his life) and choose to help the aliens. The problem is that the backstory here about him loving the ocean feels really obviously invented and the episode doesn't feel as natural as, say, a Seven of Nine episode would (since the writers have a better handle on her character because she's the best character.) But it is a good episode and the big ocean floating in space is pretty interesting.
SCORE: 8/10
Counterpoint - Voyager is inspected by Devore inspectors (they're basically space Nazis) searching for telepaths. This has been happening for weeks and Janeway is familar with the chief inspector and asshole Kashyk (his name is kind of like the Wookiee planet!) who plays classical music during the thorough inspection. Kashyk is smug but tries to make friendly chit chat with Janeway. He's found the names of four telepaths onboard: Tuvok, Vorik, Suder and some other Betazoid. WHAT ABOUT STADI? And Kes? Janeway claims all four are dead anyway. Kashyk lets Voyager away with a minor infraction, much to his second in command Prax's annoyance. When the Devore leave, Tuvok, Vorik, never before seen Betazoid and a bunch alien refugees are brought out of suspended animation in the transporter. Voyager is smuggling the refugees to a wormhole to escape Devore space, but the Doctor reports that if they go into transporter suspensioin again some of them may die. Neelix reads Flotter stories to telephatic children who already know how the story will go. Voyager is approached by Kashyk on his own and out of uniform. He tells Janeway he wants to defect and tries to prove himself by telling her the nebula they're heading to is a trap the Devore use to capture telepaths. He knows all about the telepaths in the transporter and will help them escape if Voyager takes him with them. Kashyk gives up more info. Janeway asks the telepath leader if he can be trusted but he doesn't know and Devore are trained to guard their thoughts from telepaths. They need to find a scientist who knows where the wormhole is. Janeway questions Kashyk on why he's defecting now. Voyager finds the wormhole expert but he tries to run away. Janeway just beams him onboard.
Kashyk helps Janeway get the wormhole expert to reveal its location (it's an unfixed wormhole though.) Janeway and Kashyk obviously enjoy working with each other. They listen to music as they try to come up with a way to predict the wormhole's location. Janeway (somehow) uses the counterpoint in the music as a metaphor for the way in which they can find the wormhole ("like putting too much air in a balloon!") They look at space lights together. He reveals he knows about the Prime Directive and that Janeway is breaking it to help the telepaths (is it really breaking it to help someone who asks for help?) Kashyk tells a story of a little telepath girl he once sent to her death. Kashyk invites Janeway to join him in her quarters but she declines (there's a funny bit with the security guard trying to pretend he wasn't listening.) Voyager heads for the wormhole's location as two Devore warships head towards them. Kashyk tells Janeway he'll go back to the warships to guarantee Voyager's safety by taking command. Janeway tries to talk him out of it and admits she was thinking of asking him to stay after they get through the wormhole. He says he doesn't think he would have fit in. Janeway is obviously sad to be losing him. Tuvok even tells him "live long and prosper" so you know he's defnitely a good guy now! Before Kashyk leaves Janeway tells him they'll wait for him at the wormhole as long as possible. They kiss! Later the Devore arrive at Voyager with Kashyk back in full space Nazi mode complete with Prax. He turns back into nice Kashyk when Prax leaves the room and Janeway tells him where the wormhole is and how to open it. Kashyk calls Prax back in and tells him how to find the transporter suspended telepaths. He was evil all along! Janeway congratulates him on a great performance. Kashyk fires on the wormhole...then realises it isn't there. Janeway tricked him! The telepaths aren't in the transporter buffer either. Janeway changes the music to Mahler number 1 to show she's in control, bitch. The telepaths go through the wormhole in two shuttles so that's another two Voyager has lost! Prax wants Voyager sent to a detention centre but Kashyk lets them go free because he's been outsmarted. Janeway looks sad on the Bridge when he leaves.
It's one of the best episodes of the season for sure and one of the best Janeway centric episodes of the whole series. Mulgrew and the guy who plays Kashyk (yep I forgot to look up his name) have great chemistry and even though you think he's PROBABLY still evil it would have been believable if it went either way. Janeway outsmarting him is very satisfying. The only thing I'm not sure about is Janeway looking sad at the end. Did she still have some hope that Kashyk was secretly a good guy, or that his feelings for her were real? Given how in control she just was I can see this being viewed as moment of weakness. But Starfleet Captains need love so it makes sense that she'd be a bit sad I guess.
SCORE: 9/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
There was Star Trek cosplay at the AEW (wrestling) show last night.
I'm still not entirely sure why.
I'm still not entirely sure why.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Is the guy on the right supposed to be Geordi (he has a seeing-eye dog)?
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
He's not blind, the dog was just there because...fuck knows.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Latent Image - The Doctor is taking holo photos of the crew. He notices some scar tissue on Harry's skull from an operation only the Doctor could have performed and doesn't know how it got there. Harry plays dumb (not hard!!!!!!!1) Janeway blows him off so he asks Seven for help. When she goes to help him later the Doctor can't remember asking her. Harry's scans have been deleted and the Doc's short term memory erased. Even photos the Doc took 18 months ago (when the surgery happened) have been ereased, but Seven manages to restore some of them. There's photos of a female Ensign the Doc doesn't remember. Seven tries to restore his memories and the Doc remembers a shuttle missioin with Harry and the girl, and both of them in Sickbay (Tom is his nurse rather than Kes even though it's before Seven came onboard, DISAPPOINTING.) The Doc gos to Janeway and Tuvok, wondering if an alien he saw in his memories could be responsible. They promise to look into it. The Doc smartly backs up his memories before turning his program off and leaves his camera set up to photograph anyone messing with him. When he comes back online he finds that Janeway herself ereased his memories this time. He confronts Janeway on the Bridge and she finally reveals the truth: there was a conflict in the Doc's program 18 months ago and his memories of it had to be erased. She won't tell him the details and the Doc is outraged. She has to erease his memories again to stop him breaking. Most of the crew agree with Janeway, but Seven does not and goes to see her. Seven wants to know why it's okay to violate the Doctor's rights. Janeway says the Doc is more like a replicator than a person and they can't treat him like one. They had to reprogram him to stop him blowing up. Seven points out Janeway encouraging the Doc to evolve beyond his programming, like she did for Seven, and wonders if Janeway will abandon her one day too.
Janeway and Torres go to reprogram the Doc, but Janeway tells him she'll let him know everythng that happened first. We get flashbacks to the Ensign's birthday party (the Doc notes he hardly ever sees her), Harry and the girl being shot by an alien bastard, suffering identical injuries, then the Sickbay scene (with nurse Tom because I guess Kes didn't care about helping save Harry's life.) Both needed complex treatment to survive and the Doc could only perform it on one of them in time. He chose Harry and the girl died. He chose poorly. We get a flashback to the Ensigns funeral (Kes didn't even go to that, the bitch!) and then the Doc freaking out when Neelix asks him to make an innocent decision. He explained to Neelix that he's programmed to be able to choose which patient to treat, but since both patients were equally injured he had no one to choose and he can't fucking understand why he picked Harry. Tuvok had to be called because the Doc was scaring everyone by shouting at Neelix. In the present day Janeway tells the Doc he developed a feedback loop and couldn't function anymore. The Doc begins freaking out in the same way as he did 18 months ago and tells Janeway to reprogram him because he doesn't deserve the memories. Janeway tells B'Elanna it's like there's a conflict between the Doctor's original programming and the person he's become. She says they gave him a soul and don't have the right to take it away. Janeway asks Seven if she would choose to go back to being a drone if she could and Seven says no. Janeway decides not to reprogram the Doc and instead has a crewmember stay with him at all times as he tries to get over his meltdown. Janeway sits in with the Doctor as he talks about how his actions were determined at the moment of the Big Bang. The Doc keeps ranting until Janeway falls asleep. He notices that she's ill and tells her to take a break. He starts reading the poetry book she was reading after she leaves.
It's a grat episode for the Doctor and Janeway. It feels in character that Janeway would have still been willing to mess with the Doc's mind 18 months ago, and that she might feel differently now after her experiences with Seven. The solution of just being there for the Doctor for as long as it takes for him to get over his breakdown is very Star Trek! I guess the only problem is that the Doc doesn't seem to be completely recovered by the end, yet by the next episode he'll be back to normal and none of this mentioned again. But that's our Voyager!
SCORE: 9.5/10
Bride of Choatica! - Tom and Harry are playing Captain Proton again, fighting a villain named Chaotica. Harry is excited at the prospect of meeting "slave girls" which is kind of creepy. Tom notes that the set is identical to their last adventure because sets are expensive which seems like a Star Trek in joke. A weird portal distortion thing appears in the Holodeck. Voyager stops moving at the same time. Some aliens come through the portal onto the Holodeck and take the form of Proton-type characters. They meet Chaotica, who believes them to be invaders from the fifth dimension. They're actually photonic lifeforms. Chaotica declares war on them as it seems his weapons can harm them. Voyager attempts to get moving again in fairly dull scenes. Tom and Tuvok investigate the Holodeck and find lots of dead holograms and a damaged Satan's Robot. Tom repairs him in comical fashion and the robot tells them about the invaders. Seven and Harry watch on tv. Tom, Tuvok and the robot meet one of the photonic aliens. He doesn't recognise biological life and believes the Holodeck to be real. Tom suggests to Janeway that they should help the aliens beat Chaotica so that they'll leave and Voyager will be able to move again. Paris also wants someone to take on the role of Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People and Janeway is perfect for the part!
Paris gives Janeway a crash course on Chaotica. On the Holodeck, Chaotica orders full power to the death ray as the war goes on (it's funny but also hundreds of aliens are dying for real?) Janeway shows up as Arachnia and you better believe it's sexy. Kate Mulgrew obviously has fun saying lines like "I see you kept my pheromones." She manipulates him into lowering his "lightning shield" by agreeing to become his bride. The Doctor (yes he's fine after last week) meets with the photonic aliens and they recognise him as being alive. He claims to be the president of Earth and tells them that they need Captain Proton's help in defeating Chaotica. Janeway turns against Chaotica to disable the lightning shield as it needs to be lowered so Tom can destroy the death ray (makes sense!) Things go badly at first and Voyager is pulled deeper into subspace. Janeway uses her sexiness to get Chaotica's underling to free her and finally disables the shield. Chaotica has an over the top death scene in front of Proton and Arachnia.
There's really not much plot here, with the aliens basically being jokes (even though hundreds of them die!) but that's fine because this episode is about paying tribute/making fun of the 1930's serials. It has some very funny stuff like Tuvok reactiong to anything in the Holodeck, Tom actually being witty, Janeway vamping it up and the of course Satan's Robot who should have become a permanent member of the crew. The epsode is at its best in the second half when it just stays on the Holodeck instead of cutting to the usual dull Voyager exposition. Of course I can't help but compare it to 'Our Man Bashir' and come to the conclusion that it's not as good as that. There's nothing on the leve of the Bashir/Garak dymanic there, and while this one is fun that one let the whole crew in on the fun (Chakotay just stands around like a block of wood as usual here.) It's good definitely though I guess if you hated the Proton scenes you'd think it was one of the worst ever!
SCORE: 8/10
Janeway and Torres go to reprogram the Doc, but Janeway tells him she'll let him know everythng that happened first. We get flashbacks to the Ensign's birthday party (the Doc notes he hardly ever sees her), Harry and the girl being shot by an alien bastard, suffering identical injuries, then the Sickbay scene (with nurse Tom because I guess Kes didn't care about helping save Harry's life.) Both needed complex treatment to survive and the Doc could only perform it on one of them in time. He chose Harry and the girl died. He chose poorly. We get a flashback to the Ensigns funeral (Kes didn't even go to that, the bitch!) and then the Doc freaking out when Neelix asks him to make an innocent decision. He explained to Neelix that he's programmed to be able to choose which patient to treat, but since both patients were equally injured he had no one to choose and he can't fucking understand why he picked Harry. Tuvok had to be called because the Doc was scaring everyone by shouting at Neelix. In the present day Janeway tells the Doc he developed a feedback loop and couldn't function anymore. The Doc begins freaking out in the same way as he did 18 months ago and tells Janeway to reprogram him because he doesn't deserve the memories. Janeway tells B'Elanna it's like there's a conflict between the Doctor's original programming and the person he's become. She says they gave him a soul and don't have the right to take it away. Janeway asks Seven if she would choose to go back to being a drone if she could and Seven says no. Janeway decides not to reprogram the Doc and instead has a crewmember stay with him at all times as he tries to get over his meltdown. Janeway sits in with the Doctor as he talks about how his actions were determined at the moment of the Big Bang. The Doc keeps ranting until Janeway falls asleep. He notices that she's ill and tells her to take a break. He starts reading the poetry book she was reading after she leaves.
It's a grat episode for the Doctor and Janeway. It feels in character that Janeway would have still been willing to mess with the Doc's mind 18 months ago, and that she might feel differently now after her experiences with Seven. The solution of just being there for the Doctor for as long as it takes for him to get over his breakdown is very Star Trek! I guess the only problem is that the Doc doesn't seem to be completely recovered by the end, yet by the next episode he'll be back to normal and none of this mentioned again. But that's our Voyager!
SCORE: 9.5/10
Bride of Choatica! - Tom and Harry are playing Captain Proton again, fighting a villain named Chaotica. Harry is excited at the prospect of meeting "slave girls" which is kind of creepy. Tom notes that the set is identical to their last adventure because sets are expensive which seems like a Star Trek in joke. A weird portal distortion thing appears in the Holodeck. Voyager stops moving at the same time. Some aliens come through the portal onto the Holodeck and take the form of Proton-type characters. They meet Chaotica, who believes them to be invaders from the fifth dimension. They're actually photonic lifeforms. Chaotica declares war on them as it seems his weapons can harm them. Voyager attempts to get moving again in fairly dull scenes. Tom and Tuvok investigate the Holodeck and find lots of dead holograms and a damaged Satan's Robot. Tom repairs him in comical fashion and the robot tells them about the invaders. Seven and Harry watch on tv. Tom, Tuvok and the robot meet one of the photonic aliens. He doesn't recognise biological life and believes the Holodeck to be real. Tom suggests to Janeway that they should help the aliens beat Chaotica so that they'll leave and Voyager will be able to move again. Paris also wants someone to take on the role of Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People and Janeway is perfect for the part!
Paris gives Janeway a crash course on Chaotica. On the Holodeck, Chaotica orders full power to the death ray as the war goes on (it's funny but also hundreds of aliens are dying for real?) Janeway shows up as Arachnia and you better believe it's sexy. Kate Mulgrew obviously has fun saying lines like "I see you kept my pheromones." She manipulates him into lowering his "lightning shield" by agreeing to become his bride. The Doctor (yes he's fine after last week) meets with the photonic aliens and they recognise him as being alive. He claims to be the president of Earth and tells them that they need Captain Proton's help in defeating Chaotica. Janeway turns against Chaotica to disable the lightning shield as it needs to be lowered so Tom can destroy the death ray (makes sense!) Things go badly at first and Voyager is pulled deeper into subspace. Janeway uses her sexiness to get Chaotica's underling to free her and finally disables the shield. Chaotica has an over the top death scene in front of Proton and Arachnia.
There's really not much plot here, with the aliens basically being jokes (even though hundreds of them die!) but that's fine because this episode is about paying tribute/making fun of the 1930's serials. It has some very funny stuff like Tuvok reactiong to anything in the Holodeck, Tom actually being witty, Janeway vamping it up and the of course Satan's Robot who should have become a permanent member of the crew. The epsode is at its best in the second half when it just stays on the Holodeck instead of cutting to the usual dull Voyager exposition. Of course I can't help but compare it to 'Our Man Bashir' and come to the conclusion that it's not as good as that. There's nothing on the leve of the Bashir/Garak dymanic there, and while this one is fun that one let the whole crew in on the fun (Chakotay just stands around like a block of wood as usual here.) It's good definitely though I guess if you hated the Proton scenes you'd think it was one of the worst ever!
SCORE: 8/10