The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
STADI'S DEAD MAN
FUN FACT the other Betazoid is called Jurot and was a main character in the pretty-good Star Trek Voyager video game Elite Force.
Wacky Reviews: Star Trek
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
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STADI'S DEAD MAN
FUN FACT the other Betazoid is called Jurot and was a main character in the pretty-good Star Trek Voyager video game Elite Force.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Suder's dead too but his name was still on the list! It was the crew manifest so Stadi would have been on it (and Kes was a telepath too but maybe she wasn't on the crew manifest.)
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Gravity - A Vulcan kid (it's obviously young Tuvok) is sent to see an old master. Young Tuvok doesn't like having to suppress his emotions. A woman (Lori Petty) on a desert planet kills a big spider and watches a shuttle crash through some kind of portal thing (Voyager loves portal things.) She scavenges in it and holds a gun to Tom Paris when he catches her. The universal translator isn't working. The woman is attacked by two latex aliens and Tuvok saves her with some neck pinching. Her name is Noss and Tuvok takes her back to the shuttle (why do Tom and Tuvok always crash when they're in a shuttle together? This, 'Once Upon a Time' and maybe other episodes!) They have to abandon the shuttle when more of the aliens show up and head to Noss's house (another crashed ship.) Paris has the Doctor's mobile emitter with him and finally activates him again. The Doc can talk to Noss and she tells him she's been on the planet for fourteen seasons and no ship has left in that time. In the next scene Noss is speaking English but she speaks it like a second language. It's a bit weird? All other aliens seem to speak English perfectly through the translator. And then sometime she slips into talking the alien language and the Doc has to translate. I guess it's damaged enoguh to make her sound like a foreigner speaking English. Paris notices that Noss likes Tuvok and really quickly suggests that Tuvok should cheat on his wife with her. Seriouly they've been on the planet no more than a couple of days at this point. Tom rightly apologises, but then goes back to trying to convince Tuvok to sleep with Noss and says Tuvok obviously has feeling for her too (I feel like I've missed a few scenes?) In flashback young Tuvok tells the master he's in love with a girl and he's very emotional about it.
On Voyager it's only been an hour since the shuttle disappeared and Voyager gets caught in the same "subspace sinkhole." An alien ship (the same asshole aliens as on the planet) puts a tractor beam on Voyager to pull them away from the distortion. They're going to shut the rift tomorrow and everyone on the planet will be trapped. Tuvok is injured on the planet. It's been two months since the Doctor was last activated (he was disabled to save power.) Noss nurses Tuvok back to health. She tries to kiss him but he tells her he still feels nothing for her. Tuvok meditates on a rock. Paris yells at him for how he treated Noss. Tuvok tells him about how he went crazy due to love as a young Vulcan. Tom says love is worth the risk of insanity, but Tuvok explains that Vulcan emotions are erratic and volatile. The aliens fire on the distortion trying to destroy it, leaving Voyager just 29 minutes to beam up Tom and Tuvok. Janeway sends a message through and it comes out super slow to Tom (due to the time distortion) so he speeds it up. Noss puts herself at risk so that they can be beamed up, shooting the asshole aliens herself. Tuvok goes to help her even though it isn't logical to risk two lives. Everyone gets beamed up just in the nick of time. Noss says goodbye to Tom then a private goodbye with Tuvok where he mind melds with her so she can understand how he feels. In flashback the old man tells Tuvok that love will never trouble him again.
We haven't had a good Tuvok episode in a long time so this one if very refreshing. Tim Russ and Lori Petty work really well together. The planet looks more real than the typical Voyager crash site and there's big spiders! My only real issue is that the scene with Tom telling Tuvok to cheat on his wife happens way too soon. They really hadn't established that Tuvok had feelings for Noss by that point so it was pretty odd. The flashbacks are kind of pointless too since Tuvok tells Tom the whole story. But it's very good.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Bliss - An old alien guy (the excellent W. Morgan Sheppard) attacks some kind of evil looking space cloud enitity thng. Voyager finds a wormhole that'll take them right back to Earth but in a nice touch NOBODY believes it's real and Janeway just rolls her eyes. Tom, Seven and Naomi are off in a shuttle on a mission because Naomi is more competent than most of the crew. When they return the crew are much more excited about the wormhole. Seven is more skeptical. She finds a problem with the wormhole but Janeway says a message from Starfleet told her it's okay. She thinks Seven just doesn't want to go bac to Earth. Janeway gets a letter from Mark telling her he's broke up with his fiancee and Chakotay (remember him) gets a full pardon from Starfleet. Seven watches Janeway's log entries and notices her suddenly and suspiciously becoming excited about the wormhole. Neelix obnoxiously delivers a letter to "Annika Hansen" and tells her he's been made an ambassador by Starfleet. Seven goes to Tom but he's been taken in the same way as the rest of the crew. Seven gets a message from the old man's ship inside the wormhole, telling her she's being deceived, but Tuvok doesn't believe her despite Seven's logic. The only other person not affected by wormhole fever is Naomi, who Seven finds hiding in the cargo bay (with her Flotter doll, aww.) She doesn't want to go to Earth because Voyager is her home. The Doctor's been shut down and Chakotay tells Seven she has to be put in stasis. Seven easily outsmarts Chakotay and puts him behind a forcefield, going on the run with Naomi. Seven shoots B'Elanna and a bunch of engineers and it's shown in slow motion for some reason. Tuvok manages to knock her out. Voyager finally flies into the wormhole which is really the evil cloud thing from the teaser. The crew all see Earth and have visions of Earth and loved ones but really they're all lying unconscious.
Little Naomi walks the ship alone as the only one awake until she finds Seven and wakes her. Naomi is sad when she sees a sleeping Neelix (they don't bother havng her ask to check on her mum.) Seven carries her because she's a good Borg. Seven contacts the old man's ship. He's paranoid, thnking Seven is an illusion created by the big evil cloud entity thing, but she convinces him to beam over. He explains that the anomoly fools people by giving them what they've always wanted then eats their spaceships. He's been hunting it for forty years and the it still manages to trick him sometimes (that's how he got stuck inside.) He says the only way out is to destroy the monster. They activate the Doctor for help. The Doctor tries to use a device to fix B'Elanna's bran, but when she wakes up she just thnks she can see the Maquis alive and well. Space Ahab goes off on monoloques about his past experiences with the creature and they're all fun. The Doc's annoyed by his negativity. He wants to kill the creature but the Doctor wants to make Voyager less "tasty" so the monster will spit them out (they soured the milk!) Space Ahab goes back to his ship after offering the Doctor a place on his crew. The Doc isn't interested in being a monster hunter. The plan appears to work first time, with Voyager and the old man both escaping. Of course it's a trick, as Space Ahab tells Seven she's been deceived (she was immune to the illusion of Earth but not to the illusion of escapng.) Voyager escapes for real and the old man says a friendly farewell to Seven. Seven and Naomi talk the next day and Naomi thinks Earth can't be too bad since the whole crew love it. The old man continues hunting the monster.
It's an episode that sound bad on paper. They've done the "crew are tricked into thinking they'll get home!" thing several times before. The whole plot is kind of ripped off from the best episode of Red Dwarf, really. And yet it's highly entertaining, thanks to the execution. It helps that W. Morgan Sheppard and Scarlett Pomers are better actors than many of the regular cast, and Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo are great as always. So yeah I found it thoroughly enjoyable despite being completely inessential!
SCORE: 8.5/10
On Voyager it's only been an hour since the shuttle disappeared and Voyager gets caught in the same "subspace sinkhole." An alien ship (the same asshole aliens as on the planet) puts a tractor beam on Voyager to pull them away from the distortion. They're going to shut the rift tomorrow and everyone on the planet will be trapped. Tuvok is injured on the planet. It's been two months since the Doctor was last activated (he was disabled to save power.) Noss nurses Tuvok back to health. She tries to kiss him but he tells her he still feels nothing for her. Tuvok meditates on a rock. Paris yells at him for how he treated Noss. Tuvok tells him about how he went crazy due to love as a young Vulcan. Tom says love is worth the risk of insanity, but Tuvok explains that Vulcan emotions are erratic and volatile. The aliens fire on the distortion trying to destroy it, leaving Voyager just 29 minutes to beam up Tom and Tuvok. Janeway sends a message through and it comes out super slow to Tom (due to the time distortion) so he speeds it up. Noss puts herself at risk so that they can be beamed up, shooting the asshole aliens herself. Tuvok goes to help her even though it isn't logical to risk two lives. Everyone gets beamed up just in the nick of time. Noss says goodbye to Tom then a private goodbye with Tuvok where he mind melds with her so she can understand how he feels. In flashback the old man tells Tuvok that love will never trouble him again.
We haven't had a good Tuvok episode in a long time so this one if very refreshing. Tim Russ and Lori Petty work really well together. The planet looks more real than the typical Voyager crash site and there's big spiders! My only real issue is that the scene with Tom telling Tuvok to cheat on his wife happens way too soon. They really hadn't established that Tuvok had feelings for Noss by that point so it was pretty odd. The flashbacks are kind of pointless too since Tuvok tells Tom the whole story. But it's very good.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Bliss - An old alien guy (the excellent W. Morgan Sheppard) attacks some kind of evil looking space cloud enitity thng. Voyager finds a wormhole that'll take them right back to Earth but in a nice touch NOBODY believes it's real and Janeway just rolls her eyes. Tom, Seven and Naomi are off in a shuttle on a mission because Naomi is more competent than most of the crew. When they return the crew are much more excited about the wormhole. Seven is more skeptical. She finds a problem with the wormhole but Janeway says a message from Starfleet told her it's okay. She thinks Seven just doesn't want to go bac to Earth. Janeway gets a letter from Mark telling her he's broke up with his fiancee and Chakotay (remember him) gets a full pardon from Starfleet. Seven watches Janeway's log entries and notices her suddenly and suspiciously becoming excited about the wormhole. Neelix obnoxiously delivers a letter to "Annika Hansen" and tells her he's been made an ambassador by Starfleet. Seven goes to Tom but he's been taken in the same way as the rest of the crew. Seven gets a message from the old man's ship inside the wormhole, telling her she's being deceived, but Tuvok doesn't believe her despite Seven's logic. The only other person not affected by wormhole fever is Naomi, who Seven finds hiding in the cargo bay (with her Flotter doll, aww.) She doesn't want to go to Earth because Voyager is her home. The Doctor's been shut down and Chakotay tells Seven she has to be put in stasis. Seven easily outsmarts Chakotay and puts him behind a forcefield, going on the run with Naomi. Seven shoots B'Elanna and a bunch of engineers and it's shown in slow motion for some reason. Tuvok manages to knock her out. Voyager finally flies into the wormhole which is really the evil cloud thing from the teaser. The crew all see Earth and have visions of Earth and loved ones but really they're all lying unconscious.
Little Naomi walks the ship alone as the only one awake until she finds Seven and wakes her. Naomi is sad when she sees a sleeping Neelix (they don't bother havng her ask to check on her mum.) Seven carries her because she's a good Borg. Seven contacts the old man's ship. He's paranoid, thnking Seven is an illusion created by the big evil cloud entity thing, but she convinces him to beam over. He explains that the anomoly fools people by giving them what they've always wanted then eats their spaceships. He's been hunting it for forty years and the it still manages to trick him sometimes (that's how he got stuck inside.) He says the only way out is to destroy the monster. They activate the Doctor for help. The Doctor tries to use a device to fix B'Elanna's bran, but when she wakes up she just thnks she can see the Maquis alive and well. Space Ahab goes off on monoloques about his past experiences with the creature and they're all fun. The Doc's annoyed by his negativity. He wants to kill the creature but the Doctor wants to make Voyager less "tasty" so the monster will spit them out (they soured the milk!) Space Ahab goes back to his ship after offering the Doctor a place on his crew. The Doc isn't interested in being a monster hunter. The plan appears to work first time, with Voyager and the old man both escaping. Of course it's a trick, as Space Ahab tells Seven she's been deceived (she was immune to the illusion of Earth but not to the illusion of escapng.) Voyager escapes for real and the old man says a friendly farewell to Seven. Seven and Naomi talk the next day and Naomi thinks Earth can't be too bad since the whole crew love it. The old man continues hunting the monster.
It's an episode that sound bad on paper. They've done the "crew are tricked into thinking they'll get home!" thing several times before. The whole plot is kind of ripped off from the best episode of Red Dwarf, really. And yet it's highly entertaining, thanks to the execution. It helps that W. Morgan Sheppard and Scarlett Pomers are better actors than many of the regular cast, and Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo are great as always. So yeah I found it thoroughly enjoyable despite being completely inessential!
SCORE: 8.5/10
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Season 5 is a good season!
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Dark Frontier: Part 1 - The Borg have spotted Voyager and give the usual "resistance is futile" message. Fortunately it's a smaller Borg ship (it's not even a cool shape) and Voyager manages to blow it up. Janeway orders the wreckage beamed over to search it for anything good. She's sick of avoiding the Borg and starts to come up with a crazy plan once Seven finds a data node with the positions of other Borg ships stored on it. Janeway calls her plan "Fort Knox": they'll break into a damaged Borg sphere and steal a transwarp coil. Janeway wants Seven to go over the research her parents did on the Borg as they tracked a cube for three years and are Borg experts. Seven brings the records to her in a box full of PADs. Wait, you can have thousands of books on a single Kindle today but in the future you need whole boxes of PADs to store the research of a single ship? We get flashbacks with Seven's dad talking about how Starfleet refused to let them research the Borg so they went rogue. Which means Starfleet knew about the Borg before 'Q Who'. Fuck you, TNG! The first flashbac is fine but not particularly interestng, showing young Annika living with her parents on the Raven and the first time they encountered a Borg cube. Voyager runs a holographic simulation of their mission to the sphere (the episode tries to trick us into thinking it's real at first.) Things go badly and holo Borg beam over to the holo Bridge.
Janeway notices that Seven was distracted during the mission and has been reluctant to look through her parents' research. Seven assures her she's fine. Naomi comes to see Seven because she's had a bad dream about the Borg and Seven's basically her mother now. But then Naomi turns into a drone because this is s dream like the opening of 'First Contact' and Seven hears the Borg Queen's voice like in 'First Contact.' The Queen says she knows about Voyager's plans but will spare the ship if Seven rejoins the Collective. We get another Hansen scene where the dad has beamed over to a Cube and is just casually watching drones gonig about their drone business. He has some kind of personal forcefield that stops the Borg seeing him. Seven rants to the Dcotor about her parents being responsible for her being assimilated due to their arrogance. Can't disagree with that. Janeway is worried about Seven's erratic behaviour and takes her off the mission. Seven won't tell her about the Queen's message and instead says she's desperate to go on the mission because she cares about the Voyager crew so much. Janeway is won over. The mission begins for real, with the away team using the Hansens' bio dampener things. Voyager gets the transwarp coil, but Seven tells Janeay she's decided to rejoin the Collective. Janeway doesn't want to leave without her but a forcefield divides them and some drones take Seven away. The Sphere takes Seven to BORG CITY where she meets the Queen (who has a similar but slightly less impressive ending as in 'First Contact') who is now played by Susanna Thompson. (These two episodes are up on Netflix as one 90 minute episode but I'm still counting them as two episodes as each part had a different director. OKAY.)
It's a set up episode so it's hard to judge. Jeri Ryan is great as always. The Hansen flashbacks are werid because they seems to contradict what we knew about the Borg from TNG. I do like when Seven gets angry at her parents for being as careless and taking her with them to fucking follow the Borg about. The stuff with the Queen talking to Seven and wanting her to rejoin the collective because she is "unique" really does feel like 'Frist Contact' being remade. Let's see what they do with it in part two. The mission to the Brog cube is fairly exciting. I don't know how to rate this really? It was good but I don't think it holds up as well now that we know it was the start of Voayger treating the Borg like easily beatable jabronis. It also has that problem all part ones have where it feels like it's stretched out because they need a certain part to be the cliffhanger.
SCORE: 8/10
Dark Frontier: Part 2 - The Queen tells Seven that the Voyager crew have recreated her in their image. She claims to have given Seven to the Voyager crew on puprpose so she could learn about individuality then return to the collective. Janeway wonders why Seven chose this moment to rejoin the Collective. Chakoay seems to be happy tbe be rid of her. Neelix asks if he should deactivate Seven's alcove but Janeway tells him to leave it on. Naomi brings a rescue plan to save Seven to Janeway and says they shouldn't give up on her. Janeway finds evidence that the Borg sent a secret message to Seven. The Queen tells Seven she won't be assimilated because her individuality will help the Borg understand humans and assimilate humanity. Seven rightly points out that the Queen has already assimilated her memories (while she was regenerating) so doesn't really need her (I think this is kind of a flaw with the episode!) The Queen says Seven is the only drone to ever reclaim her individuality. What about Hugh? Locutus? And surely there must be others out of the billions of drones. We get another Hansen flashback as they're now beaming individual drones over to the Raven and tagging them to track them. It seems really unlikely they'd get away with this! Janeway instructs the crew on the rescue mission she's preparing to launch. Luckily the Hansens had shielding that will make the Delta Flyer invisible too. The Queen's ship is attack by an allien race the Borg have been trying to assimilate. Their ship is in danger but Seven makes a suggestion that saves them. So Seven's kind of responsible for them being assimilated. An alien tries to escape and Seven grabs him instinctively, then watches in horror as he's assimilated. Seven runs off and manages to liberate four of the aliens. But three hundred thousand others are assimilated. Seven feels bad after, obviously, but the Queen tells her it's actually a beautiful thing. The Queen spots the ship with the four escapees and asks Seven what she'd do. Seven suggests letting them go but the Queen knows she freed them and has their ship assimilated.
Another Hansen flashback shows them trying to escape the Borg (while young Annika tries to sleep.) Annika asks her dad (she never talks to her mum) if it'll hurt to be a drone. She's not as good an actress as ScarPo. Janeway, Tuvok, Tom and the Doc use the stolen transwarp drive to arrive at Borg City. The Queen tells Seven they're going to assimilate the humans next and shows a hologram of a male human who is lamely wearing underewar (why would the Borg care?) She's created a bio weapon that will assimilate all of Earth and wants Seven to work on it. She introduces Seven to the drone of her assimilated father and asks her to be one with them again. The Queen can see the DF because she assimilated the knowledge on its shielding through daddy Hansen. Janeway and Tuvok beam over as the Queen and Seven watch on tv. The Queen still wants Seven to switch sides but she won't. Janeway comes right to the throne room and holds a phaser rifle to the Queen while Tom is aimng torpedos. Seven sides with Janeway and tries to shut down the forcefield the Queen has up so they can be beamed out. Janeway has to shoot something but it eventually works and they beam to the Flyer. They get into a transwarp conduit but a Borg ship follows. The Flyer gets out of the conduit and back to the waiting Voyager where Chakotay manages to destroy the conduit with a load of torpedos (remember when Voyager had a limited number lol.) Loads of blown up Borg ships come shooting through (I guess the Queen died?) Janeay reports that Voyager got fifteen years closer to home before the transwarp coil gave up. Janeway orders Seven to get some sleep.
I thought it was better than part 1 on the whole because of the Seven/BQ scenes and the action, but there were still problems. It's never really explained why the Queen doesn't just assimilate Seven. That's how the Borg learn! She seems to just want to keep Seven as a unique individual and seduce her like Data in First Contact. The problem is that this epsidoe isn't willing to go all the way with the seduction like FC, perhaps because they didn't want sexy scenes between two women (ironic given Thompson's role in DS9!) I'm not suggesting they should have kissed or anything but this Queen was a lot more subdued and emotionless than the one in FC. At no point do you really think there's any chance Seven will defect. Maybe if it had happened in season four that would have seemed like a possibility. Anyway it's a good two parter but doesn't quite hit the highs it could have.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Janeway notices that Seven was distracted during the mission and has been reluctant to look through her parents' research. Seven assures her she's fine. Naomi comes to see Seven because she's had a bad dream about the Borg and Seven's basically her mother now. But then Naomi turns into a drone because this is s dream like the opening of 'First Contact' and Seven hears the Borg Queen's voice like in 'First Contact.' The Queen says she knows about Voyager's plans but will spare the ship if Seven rejoins the Collective. We get another Hansen scene where the dad has beamed over to a Cube and is just casually watching drones gonig about their drone business. He has some kind of personal forcefield that stops the Borg seeing him. Seven rants to the Dcotor about her parents being responsible for her being assimilated due to their arrogance. Can't disagree with that. Janeway is worried about Seven's erratic behaviour and takes her off the mission. Seven won't tell her about the Queen's message and instead says she's desperate to go on the mission because she cares about the Voyager crew so much. Janeway is won over. The mission begins for real, with the away team using the Hansens' bio dampener things. Voyager gets the transwarp coil, but Seven tells Janeay she's decided to rejoin the Collective. Janeway doesn't want to leave without her but a forcefield divides them and some drones take Seven away. The Sphere takes Seven to BORG CITY where she meets the Queen (who has a similar but slightly less impressive ending as in 'First Contact') who is now played by Susanna Thompson. (These two episodes are up on Netflix as one 90 minute episode but I'm still counting them as two episodes as each part had a different director. OKAY.)
It's a set up episode so it's hard to judge. Jeri Ryan is great as always. The Hansen flashbacks are werid because they seems to contradict what we knew about the Borg from TNG. I do like when Seven gets angry at her parents for being as careless and taking her with them to fucking follow the Borg about. The stuff with the Queen talking to Seven and wanting her to rejoin the collective because she is "unique" really does feel like 'Frist Contact' being remade. Let's see what they do with it in part two. The mission to the Brog cube is fairly exciting. I don't know how to rate this really? It was good but I don't think it holds up as well now that we know it was the start of Voayger treating the Borg like easily beatable jabronis. It also has that problem all part ones have where it feels like it's stretched out because they need a certain part to be the cliffhanger.
SCORE: 8/10
Dark Frontier: Part 2 - The Queen tells Seven that the Voyager crew have recreated her in their image. She claims to have given Seven to the Voyager crew on puprpose so she could learn about individuality then return to the collective. Janeway wonders why Seven chose this moment to rejoin the Collective. Chakoay seems to be happy tbe be rid of her. Neelix asks if he should deactivate Seven's alcove but Janeway tells him to leave it on. Naomi brings a rescue plan to save Seven to Janeway and says they shouldn't give up on her. Janeway finds evidence that the Borg sent a secret message to Seven. The Queen tells Seven she won't be assimilated because her individuality will help the Borg understand humans and assimilate humanity. Seven rightly points out that the Queen has already assimilated her memories (while she was regenerating) so doesn't really need her (I think this is kind of a flaw with the episode!) The Queen says Seven is the only drone to ever reclaim her individuality. What about Hugh? Locutus? And surely there must be others out of the billions of drones. We get another Hansen flashback as they're now beaming individual drones over to the Raven and tagging them to track them. It seems really unlikely they'd get away with this! Janeway instructs the crew on the rescue mission she's preparing to launch. Luckily the Hansens had shielding that will make the Delta Flyer invisible too. The Queen's ship is attack by an allien race the Borg have been trying to assimilate. Their ship is in danger but Seven makes a suggestion that saves them. So Seven's kind of responsible for them being assimilated. An alien tries to escape and Seven grabs him instinctively, then watches in horror as he's assimilated. Seven runs off and manages to liberate four of the aliens. But three hundred thousand others are assimilated. Seven feels bad after, obviously, but the Queen tells her it's actually a beautiful thing. The Queen spots the ship with the four escapees and asks Seven what she'd do. Seven suggests letting them go but the Queen knows she freed them and has their ship assimilated.
Another Hansen flashback shows them trying to escape the Borg (while young Annika tries to sleep.) Annika asks her dad (she never talks to her mum) if it'll hurt to be a drone. She's not as good an actress as ScarPo. Janeway, Tuvok, Tom and the Doc use the stolen transwarp drive to arrive at Borg City. The Queen tells Seven they're going to assimilate the humans next and shows a hologram of a male human who is lamely wearing underewar (why would the Borg care?) She's created a bio weapon that will assimilate all of Earth and wants Seven to work on it. She introduces Seven to the drone of her assimilated father and asks her to be one with them again. The Queen can see the DF because she assimilated the knowledge on its shielding through daddy Hansen. Janeway and Tuvok beam over as the Queen and Seven watch on tv. The Queen still wants Seven to switch sides but she won't. Janeway comes right to the throne room and holds a phaser rifle to the Queen while Tom is aimng torpedos. Seven sides with Janeway and tries to shut down the forcefield the Queen has up so they can be beamed out. Janeway has to shoot something but it eventually works and they beam to the Flyer. They get into a transwarp conduit but a Borg ship follows. The Flyer gets out of the conduit and back to the waiting Voyager where Chakotay manages to destroy the conduit with a load of torpedos (remember when Voyager had a limited number lol.) Loads of blown up Borg ships come shooting through (I guess the Queen died?) Janeay reports that Voyager got fifteen years closer to home before the transwarp coil gave up. Janeway orders Seven to get some sleep.
I thought it was better than part 1 on the whole because of the Seven/BQ scenes and the action, but there were still problems. It's never really explained why the Queen doesn't just assimilate Seven. That's how the Borg learn! She seems to just want to keep Seven as a unique individual and seduce her like Data in First Contact. The problem is that this epsidoe isn't willing to go all the way with the seduction like FC, perhaps because they didn't want sexy scenes between two women (ironic given Thompson's role in DS9!) I'm not suggesting they should have kissed or anything but this Queen was a lot more subdued and emotionless than the one in FC. At no point do you really think there's any chance Seven will defect. Maybe if it had happened in season four that would have seemed like a possibility. Anyway it's a good two parter but doesn't quite hit the highs it could have.
SCORE: 8.5/10
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
One of the things I really don't like about how Voyager treated the Borg, and Dark Frontier is a really good example of this, is how they made the Borg interiors look really shit by making green the Borg's favourite colour for some reason and just covering everything in really bright green lighting.
Like in TNG the green was definitely there, but it was a lot more subdued and there were plenty of scenes on the Borg ship in Best of Both worlds where it was basically just black and white with a hint of red.
Then First Contact does bring up the green a lot, but it's still not that dominant and there's still lots of nice black and reds everywhere.
But then Voyager just has all Borg ships look like they're set in a shitty cybergoth nightclub from the early 2000's when The Matrix was still the cool thing.
IT'S BAD.
Like in TNG the green was definitely there, but it was a lot more subdued and there were plenty of scenes on the Borg ship in Best of Both worlds where it was basically just black and white with a hint of red.
Then First Contact does bring up the green a lot, but it's still not that dominant and there's still lots of nice black and reds everywhere.
But then Voyager just has all Borg ships look like they're set in a shitty cybergoth nightclub from the early 2000's when The Matrix was still the cool thing.
IT'S BAD.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
The new Queen changed the colour scheme.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
The Disease - There's a pretty cool shot of a massive spaceship to start, eventually zooming into a bedroom where Harry's getting off with an alien. His chest glows. It's a generational ship with four hundred years of history of its own. Janeway says Voyager is just like them because its journey could last several generations (eh, aren't they shaved twenty five years off their journey this season alone so it seems unlikely.) Harry's worried that he'll be caught with his alien girlfriend as Janeway ordered no personal interactions with the alien crew. The plasma transfer (or whatever) Voyager is trying to do with the generational ship doesn't go well and the Captain is sick of Janeway (this gives Tom a chance to bring back his terrible "friendly people!" catchphrase.) Tom can instantly tell that Harry has fallen in love with the alien lass. Harry talks to the alien about how sick and wrong the sex between them was (even though she looks exaclty like a human) but he was totally into it. Tuvok detects Harry's secret sex chat and tells Chakotay, but Tom covers for Harry. Tom warns Harry he's taking a big risk. Harry asks Seven what she thinks of love. She compares it to a disease. Harry starts to glow. Seven drags him to Sickbay and Harry has to confess to the Doctor that he's caught a space VD. The Doc is shocked Harry had sex without medical clearance, as if that never normally happens. He grasses Harry up to Janeway and she gives him a thorough dressing down as well. Did this episode originally air as an after school special? She orders Harry to break up with his space girlfriend. Tuvok and Neelix find one of the aliens hiding on Voyager. Harry's girlfriend tells him that their biological connection will grow stronger now they've had sex. Shouldn't she have told him this before? Harry fails at breaking up with her and they shag again.
Chakotay and Tuvok question the stowaway. He, and thousands more, dislike life on the generational ship as they're not allowed to leave. He warns that his "movement" are willing to resort to violence. Chakotay and Janeway have dinner and he wonders if she was too hard on Harry. The Captain tells Janeway that when his people mate they do so far life and Harry might die now. That escalated fast. Seven and B'Elanna have found synthetic parasites on the alien ship, no doubt planted by the terrorists. Harry beams his girlfriend over to a shuttle for a space booty call. Why is she the only member of her species to talk in a weird accent? This scene is really boring and they don't have much chemistry considering they're supposed to be biologically linked. Tuvok flies out in the Delta Flyer to cockblock. Harry's girlfriend is questioned by the leader of the aliens back on Voyager as she's one of the terrorists (or dissidents, whatever.) The parasites are to break the generational ship up into smaller ships so everyone will have a choice to stay or not. Janeway warns the parasites could cause explosions that'll kill loads of people. Wow Harry's girlfriend is really reckless. Kathryn orders Harry to Sickbay for treatment but he tells her he's not sick, he's just in love. Garrett Wang's acting is awful here, like 'Timeless' never happened. The alien ship starts blowing up. Voyager saves them and the ship breaks up into smaller ships like the dissidents planned. Harry and the girl (who is free to go despite nearly killing loads of people) say a sad goodbye to each other as apparently their conditions can be easily treated with medication and the I guess the leader was just lying about Harry being close to death or something. Harry refuses to take his medecine because he's an idiot and wants to experience the love in full. Janeway says Harry is a better man than when she first met. Based on the events of this episode? Seven goes to Harry and tells him that maybe love can be a source of strength and isn't a disease at all. Again, I'm not sure why.
Okay the thing everyone immediately says about this episode is "BUT KIRK HAD SEX WITH A DIFFERENT ALIEN EVERY WEEK AND NEVER GOT SICK" and that's not really true (Kirk didn't have sex that much!) but the point is valid. We've seen Star Trek characters have sex with unknown aliens before without obeying an kind of safe sex protocol. Chakotay shagged that woman in 'Unforgettable' last season, then forgot about it, then shagged her again. Janeway didn't stick him in the Brig! On the other hand it does make logical sense that there would be protocols for making "contact" (SEXUAL CONTACT) with aliens. I don't really have a big problem with the sexual contact protocol stuff, apart from it coming across kind of preachy at times in the episode. The problem is that Garrett Wang is a plank of wood and the actress playing his girlfriend isn't much better so I don't care at all about their love story. They're supposed to be unable to resist each other but they don't sell it at all. There's no passion, just some kissing and giggling. They should have shagged each other so much that they made a shuttle explore or something. The generational ship is an interesting idea but the aliens are just the usual asshole xenophobes Voyager meets every week. This is bad!
SCORE: 3/10
Course: Oblivion - Tom and B'Elanna are getting married. That came out of nowhere! Harry plays "here comes the bride" on clarinet. Janeway performs the ceremony like other Captains before her. Tom (who is a Lieutenant again, YOUR FIRST CLUE) and B'Elanna read their own vows and it's kind of nice! The rice thrown on them after starts meliting through the floor and that's weird. Janeway's log mentions an "enhanced warp drive" that will take them home in just two years. Torres leaves Seven in charge of Engineering to go on her honeymoon, but first they find a Jeffries tube melting because its molecules are breaking down or something. B'Elanna blames the new warp core, but taking it offline doesn't help. Soon B'Elanna is ill, as are some other random crewmembers. The Doctor reports that everyone is infected and they'll all die soon unless they find out what's going on. Tom visits B'Elanna in Sickbay in a well acted scene and then she DIES. Tom keeps trying to bring her back despite the Doc telling him she's gone (why not use Seven's nanoprobes!) Chakotay and Tuvok are searching Voyager's records to see when this all started and remember the evenets of 'Demon'. They wonder whatever happened to the duplicates created in that episode. WHAT INDEED. They go to the Doc and he injects B'Elanna's body with something that makes her turn into the silver goo from that episode. They're all copies, the whole crew. Improbably the whole ship is a copy too. None of them can remember being copied as "somehow" they all forgot being duplicates (that's the explanation the Doc gives.) The new warp core is melting them all, and the ship, because they're not really human. They can survive if they go back to the Demon planet. Janeway refuses because that would be turning away from Earth. You're not from Earth!
She tells the rest of the crew what's going on. Tom is angry and says he doesn't care about B'Elanna dying because she wasn't real and neither is he or Harry or the Captain or Neelix's balls so none of this fucking matters. More crewmembers die and Chakotay begs Janeway to go back to the Demon planet. She continues to refuse despite literally killing the crew. Voyager finds a Y-class planet to land on (Janeway thinks they might be able to survive there for a while) but there's some asshole aliens on it who shoot at Voyager because that's what DQ aliens do. So they need to find another planet. Tom points out what a terrible Captain duplicate Janeway is and he's pretty much right. There's another scene with Chakotay trying to talk sense into her, as they continue to get more and more sick. Chakotay dies shortly after. Janeway tells the crew that enough people have died now that she's realised she was wrong and orders them back to the Demon planet. There's a senior staff meeting where they're all melting and it's pretty disturbing. Janeway wants to download the ships logs into a time capsule to launch in case the ship doesn't survive. Janeway dies. (I guess Tom died at some point and I wasn't looking.) Harry's the Captain. Oh boy. The ship contineus to break up as it gets closer to the Demon planet and it's so fucked up it can hardly fly. Seven launches the time probe but it breaks up. They then JUST HAPPEN to come acros the REAL Voyager. What are the chances of that? Really really low I'd say! It's not like they were even looking for them. Harry and Seven struggle to be noticed by the real Voyager by ejecting the warp core but it's all pointless as they fail like they've failed at everything the whole episode. The real Voyager detects the ship but just finds some debris and doesn't have any idea it was their own duplicates. HAHAHA THAT'S THE END.
Okay nerd complaints first: it's really stupid that Voyager was duplicated (there's no hint fo it in 'Demon') and the fact that the whole crew lost their memories (for no explain reason!) is EVEN STUPIDER STILL. Surely the duplicate Voyager has records of their time on the Demon planet, from before they all forgot who they are? Surely the Doctor would remember? Nah, they just forget because they need to for the plot. The weird thing, though, is that the episode is pretty entertaining for a while! Everyone has their acting boots on, it's certainly better than 'The Disease' by virtue of the performances. And I liked the creepiness of the staff meeting where all the characters are melting, it gave me David Lynch feelings (except not as good.) Ultimately though...what's the point of all this? It has the most cynical ending ever, where the duplicate crew just miss out on the real Voyager discovering them. So nobody knows any of this happens. The duplicates lived pointless lives and died without meaing. Is that...Star Trek? It doesn't feel like it. It's tragic, sure, but a pointless kind of tragic? It didn't work for me, but I can't deny it's an interesting episode.
SCORE: 5/10
Chakotay and Tuvok question the stowaway. He, and thousands more, dislike life on the generational ship as they're not allowed to leave. He warns that his "movement" are willing to resort to violence. Chakotay and Janeway have dinner and he wonders if she was too hard on Harry. The Captain tells Janeway that when his people mate they do so far life and Harry might die now. That escalated fast. Seven and B'Elanna have found synthetic parasites on the alien ship, no doubt planted by the terrorists. Harry beams his girlfriend over to a shuttle for a space booty call. Why is she the only member of her species to talk in a weird accent? This scene is really boring and they don't have much chemistry considering they're supposed to be biologically linked. Tuvok flies out in the Delta Flyer to cockblock. Harry's girlfriend is questioned by the leader of the aliens back on Voyager as she's one of the terrorists (or dissidents, whatever.) The parasites are to break the generational ship up into smaller ships so everyone will have a choice to stay or not. Janeway warns the parasites could cause explosions that'll kill loads of people. Wow Harry's girlfriend is really reckless. Kathryn orders Harry to Sickbay for treatment but he tells her he's not sick, he's just in love. Garrett Wang's acting is awful here, like 'Timeless' never happened. The alien ship starts blowing up. Voyager saves them and the ship breaks up into smaller ships like the dissidents planned. Harry and the girl (who is free to go despite nearly killing loads of people) say a sad goodbye to each other as apparently their conditions can be easily treated with medication and the I guess the leader was just lying about Harry being close to death or something. Harry refuses to take his medecine because he's an idiot and wants to experience the love in full. Janeway says Harry is a better man than when she first met. Based on the events of this episode? Seven goes to Harry and tells him that maybe love can be a source of strength and isn't a disease at all. Again, I'm not sure why.
Okay the thing everyone immediately says about this episode is "BUT KIRK HAD SEX WITH A DIFFERENT ALIEN EVERY WEEK AND NEVER GOT SICK" and that's not really true (Kirk didn't have sex that much!) but the point is valid. We've seen Star Trek characters have sex with unknown aliens before without obeying an kind of safe sex protocol. Chakotay shagged that woman in 'Unforgettable' last season, then forgot about it, then shagged her again. Janeway didn't stick him in the Brig! On the other hand it does make logical sense that there would be protocols for making "contact" (SEXUAL CONTACT) with aliens. I don't really have a big problem with the sexual contact protocol stuff, apart from it coming across kind of preachy at times in the episode. The problem is that Garrett Wang is a plank of wood and the actress playing his girlfriend isn't much better so I don't care at all about their love story. They're supposed to be unable to resist each other but they don't sell it at all. There's no passion, just some kissing and giggling. They should have shagged each other so much that they made a shuttle explore or something. The generational ship is an interesting idea but the aliens are just the usual asshole xenophobes Voyager meets every week. This is bad!
SCORE: 3/10
Course: Oblivion - Tom and B'Elanna are getting married. That came out of nowhere! Harry plays "here comes the bride" on clarinet. Janeway performs the ceremony like other Captains before her. Tom (who is a Lieutenant again, YOUR FIRST CLUE) and B'Elanna read their own vows and it's kind of nice! The rice thrown on them after starts meliting through the floor and that's weird. Janeway's log mentions an "enhanced warp drive" that will take them home in just two years. Torres leaves Seven in charge of Engineering to go on her honeymoon, but first they find a Jeffries tube melting because its molecules are breaking down or something. B'Elanna blames the new warp core, but taking it offline doesn't help. Soon B'Elanna is ill, as are some other random crewmembers. The Doctor reports that everyone is infected and they'll all die soon unless they find out what's going on. Tom visits B'Elanna in Sickbay in a well acted scene and then she DIES. Tom keeps trying to bring her back despite the Doc telling him she's gone (why not use Seven's nanoprobes!) Chakotay and Tuvok are searching Voyager's records to see when this all started and remember the evenets of 'Demon'. They wonder whatever happened to the duplicates created in that episode. WHAT INDEED. They go to the Doc and he injects B'Elanna's body with something that makes her turn into the silver goo from that episode. They're all copies, the whole crew. Improbably the whole ship is a copy too. None of them can remember being copied as "somehow" they all forgot being duplicates (that's the explanation the Doc gives.) The new warp core is melting them all, and the ship, because they're not really human. They can survive if they go back to the Demon planet. Janeway refuses because that would be turning away from Earth. You're not from Earth!
She tells the rest of the crew what's going on. Tom is angry and says he doesn't care about B'Elanna dying because she wasn't real and neither is he or Harry or the Captain or Neelix's balls so none of this fucking matters. More crewmembers die and Chakotay begs Janeway to go back to the Demon planet. She continues to refuse despite literally killing the crew. Voyager finds a Y-class planet to land on (Janeway thinks they might be able to survive there for a while) but there's some asshole aliens on it who shoot at Voyager because that's what DQ aliens do. So they need to find another planet. Tom points out what a terrible Captain duplicate Janeway is and he's pretty much right. There's another scene with Chakotay trying to talk sense into her, as they continue to get more and more sick. Chakotay dies shortly after. Janeway tells the crew that enough people have died now that she's realised she was wrong and orders them back to the Demon planet. There's a senior staff meeting where they're all melting and it's pretty disturbing. Janeway wants to download the ships logs into a time capsule to launch in case the ship doesn't survive. Janeway dies. (I guess Tom died at some point and I wasn't looking.) Harry's the Captain. Oh boy. The ship contineus to break up as it gets closer to the Demon planet and it's so fucked up it can hardly fly. Seven launches the time probe but it breaks up. They then JUST HAPPEN to come acros the REAL Voyager. What are the chances of that? Really really low I'd say! It's not like they were even looking for them. Harry and Seven struggle to be noticed by the real Voyager by ejecting the warp core but it's all pointless as they fail like they've failed at everything the whole episode. The real Voyager detects the ship but just finds some debris and doesn't have any idea it was their own duplicates. HAHAHA THAT'S THE END.
Okay nerd complaints first: it's really stupid that Voyager was duplicated (there's no hint fo it in 'Demon') and the fact that the whole crew lost their memories (for no explain reason!) is EVEN STUPIDER STILL. Surely the duplicate Voyager has records of their time on the Demon planet, from before they all forgot who they are? Surely the Doctor would remember? Nah, they just forget because they need to for the plot. The weird thing, though, is that the episode is pretty entertaining for a while! Everyone has their acting boots on, it's certainly better than 'The Disease' by virtue of the performances. And I liked the creepiness of the staff meeting where all the characters are melting, it gave me David Lynch feelings (except not as good.) Ultimately though...what's the point of all this? It has the most cynical ending ever, where the duplicate crew just miss out on the real Voyager discovering them. So nobody knows any of this happens. The duplicates lived pointless lives and died without meaing. Is that...Star Trek? It doesn't feel like it. It's tragic, sure, but a pointless kind of tragic? It didn't work for me, but I can't deny it's an interesting episode.
SCORE: 5/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
The Fight - Cold open with Chakotay's freaking out in Sickbay, saying he can't understand what the aliens in his head are saying. B'Elanna says if they can't get out of CHAOTIC SPACE they'll die soon! Robert Beltran does some...interesting acting as the Doctor tells him he's in contact with the aliens who live in chaotic space. Then we flashback to how this all started. Why not just start the episode normally then? Chakotay is doing holodeck boxing with his trainer...Boothby. Yeah, that's random. He sees the ring distort and is knocked out. Doc complains about boxing. There's distortions around Voyager (boring distortions) and Seven explains they've entered chaotic space and only one ship has ever escaped blah blah blah. Chakotay starts seeing boxing things everywhere and goes nuts. The problem, aside from Beltran's bad acting, is that we already know what's going on from the opening scene so this all feels like filler. Doc explains that Chuckles has the "crazy visions" gene. Chakotay tells Janeway that his grandfather went mad but refused treatment for stupid Native American reasons while kind of racist Native American-type music plays. Voyager comes across another ship whose crew have gone mad and died. Chakotay decides to go on a vision quest because that's his solution for everything. He has a memory/vision of his crazy grandfather and doesn't want to speak to the aliens because he thinks they'll make him go crazy.
The Doc talks Chakotay into going back to his vision quest to speak with the aliens. His vision takes the form of a boxing match with "Kid Chaos." Boothby's there again, because why not. Neelix drags Chakotay out of the ring. The rest of the crew all act weird and it's bad. I feel embarrassed watching this. It just goes on and on with the basic theme being that Chakotay is scared of going crazy. There's a long bit with his crazy grandfather too. Doc finally sedates him to end his and my pain. Seven detects a message from soneone. Janeway realises it's the aliens sending mesages to Chakotay. Well, yeah. That's the plot of the episode, isn't it? We already knew this! Yet the next scene has Janeway acting surprised when Chakotay says that the aliens in chaotic space are trying to contact him. Suddenly the plot has changed to Janeway and the Doc thinking Chakotay has gone mad and him trying to convince them there's aliens in chaotic space, but they already knew that! What is even happening? Is the script making no sense on purpose in an attempt to drive the viewer insane? Chakotay goes back to his boring boxing match. The aliens finally speak to him in a near identical matter as the Prophets in DS9. The Doc has to talk Chakotay into listening to the aliens for the 38th time. Crazy Chakotay goes to the Bridge and does something crazy that returns the ship to normal space. He goes back to boxing.
SCORE: 0.5/10
Think Tank - A blue alien arrives on a weird ship full of weird aliens (one's a jellyfish! One's a bloopy robot! One's a whale!) Their soft spoken leader Kurros (Jason Alexander) reveals that his group just saved the blue alien's world and now they need payment. Blue guy tries to get out of paying until Kurros threatens to destroy his planet with earthquakes. Everyone on Voyager is addicted to some flashy light game Tom introduced to them. Voyager tracks down a rare material but some alien bounty hunters known as the Hazari attack them (Chakotay wonders if the Malon hired them even though we last saw them 25,000 light years ago.) Voyager escapes them by blowing up some gas. But Voyager is still being stalked by the Hazari and Janeway can see no way to escape them. A hologram (okay it's more advanced than that) of Kurros appears to Janeway and says he has a solution. He explains that his people solve problems and all he asks in return is something unique to Earth culture. Janeway and Seven visit the "think tank" vessel. Kurros is impressed to see a Borg out of the collective. He introduces them to the whole team and mentions that they recently cured the Vidiian phage (we never find out if this is true.) Seven interfaces telephatically with the robot. Kurros later visits Janeway with a list of items he wants as payment, including Seven of Nine herself. Janeway refuses but Kurros suggests asking Seven.
Seven is intrigued by the offer as she could probably do lots of cool things with the Think Tank like hang out with a robot. Kurros tries to sweet talk Seven into joining his group, saying they could offer her perfection while Voyager will only hold her back. Seven isn't won over by his superior intellect as Voyager is her home. The Hazari just happen to show up when she declines the offer (HMM I WONDER WHO HIRED THEM.) Kurros gives Janeway a tip to help escape them. Kurros tells Janeway she should order Seven to join his group so Janeway kicks him off the ship. Voyager manages to beam two Hazari onto the ship. The Doctor finds a bio hologram of the race that first hired the Hazari (it's the trash-eating Malon!) but Janeway instantly notices the hologram is hiding the REAL hologram which shows they were hired by Kurros. Janeway tells the Hazari the truth and says they have to "out think the think tank!" in her snappy catchphrase of the week. There's a big staff meeting with the Hazari sitting in where they all try to come up with a solution. Seven solves Tom's flashy light game by cheating and Janeway realises they have to cheat to beat the think tank. Of course! She comes up with a plan. The Hazari then contact Kurros and ask for triple the bounty to capture Voyager. Kurros appears on the Bridge to taunt Janeway when the Hazari attack again. With no way out, Seven has no choice but to join the think tank. Kurros calls off the Hazari but they demand payment right away. Kurros realises that it's a trap by Voyager and the Hazari. But the REAL PLAN is for Voyager to upload a computer virus to the think tank's ship through Seven's implants. The think tank ship comes out of subspace and the Hazari attack them.
It's pretty good. It's okay. Not as good it could have been. Jason Alexander makes for a good guest star and the think tank on the whole are pretty interesting enemies. The scene where Janeway and Seven visit their ship is the best part of the episode. But they just aren't smart enough? They're supposed to be super geniuses but they don't really do much except hire a bunch of bounty hunters to shoot at Voyager, then get tricked into being shot at by those some bounty hunters. Maybe it would have been better if Seven had actually been more tempted to join the think tank and they weren't so obviously bad guys. Anyway it's a reasonable episode and anything's going to look good in comparison to the previous mess.
SCORE: 7/10
The Doc talks Chakotay into going back to his vision quest to speak with the aliens. His vision takes the form of a boxing match with "Kid Chaos." Boothby's there again, because why not. Neelix drags Chakotay out of the ring. The rest of the crew all act weird and it's bad. I feel embarrassed watching this. It just goes on and on with the basic theme being that Chakotay is scared of going crazy. There's a long bit with his crazy grandfather too. Doc finally sedates him to end his and my pain. Seven detects a message from soneone. Janeway realises it's the aliens sending mesages to Chakotay. Well, yeah. That's the plot of the episode, isn't it? We already knew this! Yet the next scene has Janeway acting surprised when Chakotay says that the aliens in chaotic space are trying to contact him. Suddenly the plot has changed to Janeway and the Doc thinking Chakotay has gone mad and him trying to convince them there's aliens in chaotic space, but they already knew that! What is even happening? Is the script making no sense on purpose in an attempt to drive the viewer insane? Chakotay goes back to his boring boxing match. The aliens finally speak to him in a near identical matter as the Prophets in DS9. The Doc has to talk Chakotay into listening to the aliens for the 38th time. Crazy Chakotay goes to the Bridge and does something crazy that returns the ship to normal space. He goes back to boxing.
SCORE: 0.5/10
Think Tank - A blue alien arrives on a weird ship full of weird aliens (one's a jellyfish! One's a bloopy robot! One's a whale!) Their soft spoken leader Kurros (Jason Alexander) reveals that his group just saved the blue alien's world and now they need payment. Blue guy tries to get out of paying until Kurros threatens to destroy his planet with earthquakes. Everyone on Voyager is addicted to some flashy light game Tom introduced to them. Voyager tracks down a rare material but some alien bounty hunters known as the Hazari attack them (Chakotay wonders if the Malon hired them even though we last saw them 25,000 light years ago.) Voyager escapes them by blowing up some gas. But Voyager is still being stalked by the Hazari and Janeway can see no way to escape them. A hologram (okay it's more advanced than that) of Kurros appears to Janeway and says he has a solution. He explains that his people solve problems and all he asks in return is something unique to Earth culture. Janeway and Seven visit the "think tank" vessel. Kurros is impressed to see a Borg out of the collective. He introduces them to the whole team and mentions that they recently cured the Vidiian phage (we never find out if this is true.) Seven interfaces telephatically with the robot. Kurros later visits Janeway with a list of items he wants as payment, including Seven of Nine herself. Janeway refuses but Kurros suggests asking Seven.
Seven is intrigued by the offer as she could probably do lots of cool things with the Think Tank like hang out with a robot. Kurros tries to sweet talk Seven into joining his group, saying they could offer her perfection while Voyager will only hold her back. Seven isn't won over by his superior intellect as Voyager is her home. The Hazari just happen to show up when she declines the offer (HMM I WONDER WHO HIRED THEM.) Kurros gives Janeway a tip to help escape them. Kurros tells Janeway she should order Seven to join his group so Janeway kicks him off the ship. Voyager manages to beam two Hazari onto the ship. The Doctor finds a bio hologram of the race that first hired the Hazari (it's the trash-eating Malon!) but Janeway instantly notices the hologram is hiding the REAL hologram which shows they were hired by Kurros. Janeway tells the Hazari the truth and says they have to "out think the think tank!" in her snappy catchphrase of the week. There's a big staff meeting with the Hazari sitting in where they all try to come up with a solution. Seven solves Tom's flashy light game by cheating and Janeway realises they have to cheat to beat the think tank. Of course! She comes up with a plan. The Hazari then contact Kurros and ask for triple the bounty to capture Voyager. Kurros appears on the Bridge to taunt Janeway when the Hazari attack again. With no way out, Seven has no choice but to join the think tank. Kurros calls off the Hazari but they demand payment right away. Kurros realises that it's a trap by Voyager and the Hazari. But the REAL PLAN is for Voyager to upload a computer virus to the think tank's ship through Seven's implants. The think tank ship comes out of subspace and the Hazari attack them.
It's pretty good. It's okay. Not as good it could have been. Jason Alexander makes for a good guest star and the think tank on the whole are pretty interesting enemies. The scene where Janeway and Seven visit their ship is the best part of the episode. But they just aren't smart enough? They're supposed to be super geniuses but they don't really do much except hire a bunch of bounty hunters to shoot at Voyager, then get tricked into being shot at by those some bounty hunters. Maybe it would have been better if Seven had actually been more tempted to join the think tank and they weren't so obviously bad guys. Anyway it's a reasonable episode and anything's going to look good in comparison to the previous mess.
SCORE: 7/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Juggernaut - Despite the fact that we last saw them 25,000 light years ago, the Malon are back! And they're still hauling toxic waste since that's literally the only thing we know about their cultuer (okay one of them wants to get home to his son so I guess they're JUST LIKE US.) One is ordered down to the core to seal some tanks even though it'll mean he'll be contaminated. Tuvok is giving B'Elanna anger management lessons because her temper is a thing again (she broke Carey's nose back in season one but she's been fine since then, other than snapping at Seven once or twice.) She storms out after he makes he confront a childhood memory of bieng called "Miss Turtlehad." Voyager picks up a distress call from the Malon and rescues the only two left alive. Their trash ship is leaking theta radiation and it's going to kill a lot of innocent people. Janeway decides Voyager has to stop it, with help from the two Malon (who are very scared to go back.) B'Elanna keeps snapping at the Malon Captain. His subordinate is scared of radiation zombies on the ship. Neelix spent six years on a Talaxian garbage scow (sure!) so he joins the away team with Chakotay and Miss Turtlehead. There's a pointless scene of Neelix cooking a "Talaxian theta radiation remedy" soup. B'Elanna and Tom nearly have an argument before she leaves as her whole character in this episode is just getting angry with people. They finally beam over to the garbage ship and it's all smoky and dark so there's coughing. B'Elanna strips down to her vest but nobody else does. B'Elanna and a Malon talk about the ethics of garbage dumping while crawling about. He talks about his son to give him depth. It was better when Dukat did it.
The other Malon goes to a contaminated deck and somebody attacks him. He dies claiming to have seen "the creature." B'Elanna starts to cough and lesions appear on her skin. She's had a lethal dose of radiaton but refuses to waste time on being treated...for some reason? She's too angry to want to stay alive? Chakotay orders her to the Malon infirmary anyway because that's just common sense come on. There's a scene between Tuvok and Seven to get Jeri Ryan into the episode. Then more coughing. Chakotay gets injured and has to be beamed back to Voyager. B'Elanna grows more and more angry and resorts to meditating. More stuff goes wrong on the garbage ship. The Doctor finds that the dead Malon as killed by a radiation zombie and asks Seven to scan for radiation zombies. Seven watches a map with a beeping light representing the zombie that Voyager has created to reference Alien as it approaches B'Elanna and Neelix. Neelix gets mauled by the zombie but of course doesn't die (possibly because of his soup.) B'Elanna finally sees the zomibe: it's just a mutated Malon labourer out for revenge. Voyager gets control of the garbage scow and tries to fly it into a star but the zombie steers them away. B'Elanna tries to talk him down using Tuvok techniques, but he's a zombie so he doesn't care. So she beats him to death with a pipe. The good guys (and Neelix) escape as the ship flies into the star. B'Elanna has flashbacks to killing the zombie and has a shower.
B'Elanna suddenly being angry and snapping at everyone make it feel like she's regressed to her season one charcater. There isn't even a good reason behind it, it's like they decided to do a B'Elanna episode and thought "okay, what do we know about her? Oh yeah, she's half Klingon. They're always angry!" It doesn't ring true, even though Roxann Dawson does a good job and the scene with Tuvok is pretty good. Most of the episode is just walking around a smoky set with everyone coughing, which isn't much fun. It does get almost exciting in the last five minutes when the zombie shows up, but ultimately I wonder what the point of B'Elanna beating him up is? Does that resolve her anger issues? Did she just need to murder someone to be able to go back to normal next week?
SCORE: 5.5/10
The other Malon goes to a contaminated deck and somebody attacks him. He dies claiming to have seen "the creature." B'Elanna starts to cough and lesions appear on her skin. She's had a lethal dose of radiaton but refuses to waste time on being treated...for some reason? She's too angry to want to stay alive? Chakotay orders her to the Malon infirmary anyway because that's just common sense come on. There's a scene between Tuvok and Seven to get Jeri Ryan into the episode. Then more coughing. Chakotay gets injured and has to be beamed back to Voyager. B'Elanna grows more and more angry and resorts to meditating. More stuff goes wrong on the garbage ship. The Doctor finds that the dead Malon as killed by a radiation zombie and asks Seven to scan for radiation zombies. Seven watches a map with a beeping light representing the zombie that Voyager has created to reference Alien as it approaches B'Elanna and Neelix. Neelix gets mauled by the zombie but of course doesn't die (possibly because of his soup.) B'Elanna finally sees the zomibe: it's just a mutated Malon labourer out for revenge. Voyager gets control of the garbage scow and tries to fly it into a star but the zombie steers them away. B'Elanna tries to talk him down using Tuvok techniques, but he's a zombie so he doesn't care. So she beats him to death with a pipe. The good guys (and Neelix) escape as the ship flies into the star. B'Elanna has flashbacks to killing the zombie and has a shower.
B'Elanna suddenly being angry and snapping at everyone make it feel like she's regressed to her season one charcater. There isn't even a good reason behind it, it's like they decided to do a B'Elanna episode and thought "okay, what do we know about her? Oh yeah, she's half Klingon. They're always angry!" It doesn't ring true, even though Roxann Dawson does a good job and the scene with Tuvok is pretty good. Most of the episode is just walking around a smoky set with everyone coughing, which isn't much fun. It does get almost exciting in the last five minutes when the zombie shows up, but ultimately I wonder what the point of B'Elanna beating him up is? Does that resolve her anger issues? Did she just need to murder someone to be able to go back to normal next week?
SCORE: 5.5/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Someone to Watch Over Me - Seven watches Tom and B'Elanna's interactions. B'Elanna confronts her and isn't happy Seven has been keeping notes on their mating behaviour. See, this is a time when it makes sense for B'Elanna to be angry rather than just having her randomly being a bitch like last week. Janeway asks Seven if she's ever considered taking a mate (why would JANEWAY want to know, eh!) Janeway, Neelix and Tuvok welcome some alien ambassador monks to the ship. One named Tomin wants to sample all of Voyager's spicy food even though his species don't like spicy food. It's refreshing to have comedy alien guests rather than asshole alien guests. The Doctor encourages Seven to explore her romantic options. He gives her a lesson on mating rituals on the Holodeck (Species 8472 have five sexes!) He takes her to Tom's old hangout Sandrines from season one(!) but without the the pool table. Tom shows up to watch Seven chat up a hologram. The Doc thinks it's going well, but Tom thinks Seven would never be able to go on a successful date with a real person. They make a wager on Seven showing up with a date at Neelix's big party. Tomin is impressed by the ladies on Voyager. Seven and The Doctor sing 'You Are My Sunshine' together as the Doc tries to teach her to show more emotion and it's quite adorable. Seven pciks a man to date with help from Harry (she doesn't consider him.) She chooses a Lt. Chapman who of course we've never seen before and will never see again. Tom thinks it'll go badly because Chapman is intimidated by strong women but the Doc defends her. Tom wonders if the Doctor isn't falling for Seven himself. The Doc lets Seven's hair down and she shakes it around in a moment that's been implanted on my memory for over twenty years for...reasons (I was a teenager when I first watched it okay.)
Seven shows up for the date with Chapman on the Holodeck in a nice dress. The Doc is there playing the piano to watch them. They have lobster and she snaps it two comically! They dance together and it's a bit like when Data dances with someone. It goes well for a moment before she injures Chapman's arm. Seven wants to give up but the Doc encourages her to keep up his social interaction course. They dance together and the Doctor's obviously falling for her. Tomin gets drunk and hangs out with girls on the Holodeck (this is all very similar to a couple of TNG B-plots.) Seven accepts the Doctor's invitation to Neelix's big party. Tomin continues to be a drunken annoyance. Tom says the Doctor doesn't count as a real date so she should lose the bet. Seven learns of the wager and is upset, thinking the Doctor doesn't reall care about her. Tomin drunkenly comes onto Seven before passing out drunk. Neelix is concerned their trade agreement will be ruined. Seven offers to use her nanoprobes to sober him up. Tomin calls her "Seven of Mine", his one funny line of the episode. The Doctor aplogises to Seven and offers to be friends. He asks Tom for advice on confessing his true feelings to her. Tom encourages him to go for it. The head monk returns with Janeway and Neelix manages to cover up Tomin's bad behaviour well enough for a successful trade agreement. The Doctor brings Seven flowers and admits his feelings. But it's just a holographic Seven! The real Seven comes to see him and says there's no potential mates for her onboard Voyager so it's time to end his lessons (you hear that, writers? NO potential mates. Not even Chakotay.) The Doctor sadly sings 'Someone to Watch Over Me' (the name of the episode!) and plays the piano.
It's the sweetest episode of Voyager and one of the sweetest of all of Trek. It works much better for me than, say, the DS9 one where Odo sings to Kira and they get together, because Seven and the Doctor feel perfectly in character here. Ryan and Picardo are always great together and take it to the next level here. Granted it's a really light story, the only stakes are "will the Doctor tell Seven he likes her!?" (he doesn't) but it was still far more compelling to me than most Voyager episodes. Robert Duncan McNeill directs and I think does a strong job too with his light touch. The only thing that really hurts it is Tomin, who is really really annoying. And not in a funny way. But it's still a lovely light episode.
SCORE: 9/10
Seven shows up for the date with Chapman on the Holodeck in a nice dress. The Doc is there playing the piano to watch them. They have lobster and she snaps it two comically! They dance together and it's a bit like when Data dances with someone. It goes well for a moment before she injures Chapman's arm. Seven wants to give up but the Doc encourages her to keep up his social interaction course. They dance together and the Doctor's obviously falling for her. Tomin gets drunk and hangs out with girls on the Holodeck (this is all very similar to a couple of TNG B-plots.) Seven accepts the Doctor's invitation to Neelix's big party. Tomin continues to be a drunken annoyance. Tom says the Doctor doesn't count as a real date so she should lose the bet. Seven learns of the wager and is upset, thinking the Doctor doesn't reall care about her. Tomin drunkenly comes onto Seven before passing out drunk. Neelix is concerned their trade agreement will be ruined. Seven offers to use her nanoprobes to sober him up. Tomin calls her "Seven of Mine", his one funny line of the episode. The Doctor aplogises to Seven and offers to be friends. He asks Tom for advice on confessing his true feelings to her. Tom encourages him to go for it. The head monk returns with Janeway and Neelix manages to cover up Tomin's bad behaviour well enough for a successful trade agreement. The Doctor brings Seven flowers and admits his feelings. But it's just a holographic Seven! The real Seven comes to see him and says there's no potential mates for her onboard Voyager so it's time to end his lessons (you hear that, writers? NO potential mates. Not even Chakotay.) The Doctor sadly sings 'Someone to Watch Over Me' (the name of the episode!) and plays the piano.
It's the sweetest episode of Voyager and one of the sweetest of all of Trek. It works much better for me than, say, the DS9 one where Odo sings to Kira and they get together, because Seven and the Doctor feel perfectly in character here. Ryan and Picardo are always great together and take it to the next level here. Granted it's a really light story, the only stakes are "will the Doctor tell Seven he likes her!?" (he doesn't) but it was still far more compelling to me than most Voyager episodes. Robert Duncan McNeill directs and I think does a strong job too with his light touch. The only thing that really hurts it is Tomin, who is really really annoying. And not in a funny way. But it's still a lovely light episode.
SCORE: 9/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
11:59 - Neelix asks Janeway about Earth landmarks. She tells him that her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel who Janeway believes was responsible for the Millennium Gate being built, then later a NASA astronaut. In flashbacks we see Shannon meet Henry Janeway, a bookseller who doesn't want to sell his shop to the Millennium Gate developers. There's lots of scenes of Shannon and Henry talking. He's old fashioned, she's an explorer. In the present day, Janeway asks Seven to find out more information on the Millennium Gate as records from that era are spotty at best (thanks Khan!) She says it's important because Shannon inspired her to join Starfleet. Neelix helps Seven find a photo of Shannon in a Ferengi database. In flashback, guest star John Carroll Lynch (not playing a psycho) offers Shannon a job in exchange for convincing Henry to sell.
Henry and Shannon clash when she suggests the Millennium Gate isn't all bad and will help with science and stuff. She doesn't want to be stuck in his bookstore forever so Henry kicks her out. In the present day the crew talk about their origins, including the Doctor being related to a chess program. Tom just happens to know the name of every NASA astronaut ever and Janeway learns from him that Shannon was never in NASA. Janeway talks to Chakotay abou how inaccurate all historical accounts are. Shannon tries to leave town but Henry causes a scene at his bookstore and the Millennium Gate people almost pull out of the project. She tells him she wants to stay with him but can't be stuck in the past like him. She convinces him to reopen his bookstore inside the Millennium Gate once its built (how long did it last before print died?) Kathryn is still sad that she believed in lies all her life but Neelix's throws a made-up ancestors party (for just the senior staff) and everyone tells Janeway that Shannon was important because she inspired her and the facts of her life don't matter.
I do like the message of the episode. You could do a good story about how the past inspires us even if we don't actually know how it really happened. And the scenes in present day are good. Kate Mulgrew does strong acting, the guy who plays Henry is good too...but I just found the flashbacks boring. I didn't really care at all about Shannon and the rest of them. I don't see why we had to spend so much time watching them. There surely must have been a more entertaining way to do the story than making us watch dry scenes of 1999 people talking?
SCORE: 6/10
Relativity - The episode starts with a pretty impessive CGI shipyard, where an Admiral greets Captain Janeway to Voyager for the first time. Sadly there's no Stadi cameo. But there is Seven of Nine in a Starfleet uniform!? We get to see Janeway meet the Doctor for the first time and he's rude and she treats him like a tool. Joe Carey (SEE NERD NOTE BELOW) hits on Seven in Engineering. Seven finds some kind of temporal weapon behind a panel. Janeway and the Admiral nearly catch her but she's beamed out to some kind of time ship just in time. Where she dies. Yep, Seven's dead, but the Captain of the time ship wants to pluck another version of her out of the timeline to take over her mission. In the present day, members of the crew are coming down with "space sickness" and a temporal anomoly hits the ship during a ping pong tournament. The Doc is called on a medical emergency by Neelix and arrives before the emergency actually happens. Time travel! It's nuts! Different parts of the ship exist in different time periods. Janeway sees weird echoes of Chakotay (he's still in the show by the way.) Janeway recognises readings from when Voyager was in dry dock just as the ship begins to be ripped apart by the time distortions. Two time dudes snatch Seven right before it blows up.
Captain Braxton (yeah it's supposed to be the same guy from 'Future's End' even though it's a new actor) tells Seven what's going on. Someone's planted a "time bomb" on Voyager and Seven must find it, and in the correct time period. Seven is given a crash course on time travel by the Relativity's First Officer and she mentions the whole Zephran Cochrane thing. Braxton brings up that Janeway has caused three major timeline changes and one resulted in him being standed in the 20th century (didn't that version of Braxton get erased or something?) THIS IS A CLUE. Seven goes back in time to Voyager during a Kazon attack (we see their ships but no actual Kazon, thankfully) and searches for the bomb. Harry detects the time readings again that Janeway recognises from dry dock. Past Janeway finds Seven, who she of course only know from that one time they met in dry dock. Seven explains who she is and wins Janeway over, possibly because Janeway fancies her. Janeway and Seven catch the crime traveller: it's Captain Braxton himself! Or rather a future version of him (who looks the same age.) Future Braxton is suffering from temporal psychosis and tells our Braxton that it's all because of Janeway getting him stuck in 20th century Earth. The Relativity's First Officer arrests Braxton for future crimes, in a funny bit. Cazy Braxton jumps to another time period and Seven follows, even though it puts her life at risk. She chases him through the corridors in dry dock Voyager. Braxton jumps to present day Voyager, where Seven shoots him in front of herself to everyone's confusion. She's pulled back to Relativity because she's about to die, but leaves the other Seven to take care of Braxton. He's caught pretty quickly. The Relativity's First officer pulls Janeway to the ship and sends her back in time to stop Braxton right when all this began, to stop any of this from happening. The XO explains all the Braxtons and Sevens will be stuck back together into one version of themselves.
It's a lot of fun! Yeah it's the episode where they just decide "fuck it, time travel doesn't have to make sense!" but that's fine because it's quite a light hearted episode. The best way to do Trek time travel is probably just to not explain everything and just have cool things like ping pong balls freezing in mid air. Okay 'Timeless' was good too I don't know why I typed that previous sentence. BUT THIS EPISODE IS VERY GOOD.
NERD NOTE: I hate how they use Carey in the past scene in this episode. I mean I actually like it because the actor's pretty good and the character's likable, but I hate how they put Carey in the past so that you think "oh yeah, he was around in season one! It makes sense he'd be in a past scene!" BUT HE'S STILL ALIVE. Carey only died in 'Yeah of Hell' and that was reset at the end of the episode. There's no reason why Carey should be a sign that a scene is set in the past. He should be a proper recurring character. THere should be many proper recurring characters. It's weird and confusing to make him "past guy" without explain what the fuck happened to him in the present day.
SCORE: 9/10
Henry and Shannon clash when she suggests the Millennium Gate isn't all bad and will help with science and stuff. She doesn't want to be stuck in his bookstore forever so Henry kicks her out. In the present day the crew talk about their origins, including the Doctor being related to a chess program. Tom just happens to know the name of every NASA astronaut ever and Janeway learns from him that Shannon was never in NASA. Janeway talks to Chakotay abou how inaccurate all historical accounts are. Shannon tries to leave town but Henry causes a scene at his bookstore and the Millennium Gate people almost pull out of the project. She tells him she wants to stay with him but can't be stuck in the past like him. She convinces him to reopen his bookstore inside the Millennium Gate once its built (how long did it last before print died?) Kathryn is still sad that she believed in lies all her life but Neelix's throws a made-up ancestors party (for just the senior staff) and everyone tells Janeway that Shannon was important because she inspired her and the facts of her life don't matter.
I do like the message of the episode. You could do a good story about how the past inspires us even if we don't actually know how it really happened. And the scenes in present day are good. Kate Mulgrew does strong acting, the guy who plays Henry is good too...but I just found the flashbacks boring. I didn't really care at all about Shannon and the rest of them. I don't see why we had to spend so much time watching them. There surely must have been a more entertaining way to do the story than making us watch dry scenes of 1999 people talking?
SCORE: 6/10
Relativity - The episode starts with a pretty impessive CGI shipyard, where an Admiral greets Captain Janeway to Voyager for the first time. Sadly there's no Stadi cameo. But there is Seven of Nine in a Starfleet uniform!? We get to see Janeway meet the Doctor for the first time and he's rude and she treats him like a tool. Joe Carey (SEE NERD NOTE BELOW) hits on Seven in Engineering. Seven finds some kind of temporal weapon behind a panel. Janeway and the Admiral nearly catch her but she's beamed out to some kind of time ship just in time. Where she dies. Yep, Seven's dead, but the Captain of the time ship wants to pluck another version of her out of the timeline to take over her mission. In the present day, members of the crew are coming down with "space sickness" and a temporal anomoly hits the ship during a ping pong tournament. The Doc is called on a medical emergency by Neelix and arrives before the emergency actually happens. Time travel! It's nuts! Different parts of the ship exist in different time periods. Janeway sees weird echoes of Chakotay (he's still in the show by the way.) Janeway recognises readings from when Voyager was in dry dock just as the ship begins to be ripped apart by the time distortions. Two time dudes snatch Seven right before it blows up.
Captain Braxton (yeah it's supposed to be the same guy from 'Future's End' even though it's a new actor) tells Seven what's going on. Someone's planted a "time bomb" on Voyager and Seven must find it, and in the correct time period. Seven is given a crash course on time travel by the Relativity's First Officer and she mentions the whole Zephran Cochrane thing. Braxton brings up that Janeway has caused three major timeline changes and one resulted in him being standed in the 20th century (didn't that version of Braxton get erased or something?) THIS IS A CLUE. Seven goes back in time to Voyager during a Kazon attack (we see their ships but no actual Kazon, thankfully) and searches for the bomb. Harry detects the time readings again that Janeway recognises from dry dock. Past Janeway finds Seven, who she of course only know from that one time they met in dry dock. Seven explains who she is and wins Janeway over, possibly because Janeway fancies her. Janeway and Seven catch the crime traveller: it's Captain Braxton himself! Or rather a future version of him (who looks the same age.) Future Braxton is suffering from temporal psychosis and tells our Braxton that it's all because of Janeway getting him stuck in 20th century Earth. The Relativity's First Officer arrests Braxton for future crimes, in a funny bit. Cazy Braxton jumps to another time period and Seven follows, even though it puts her life at risk. She chases him through the corridors in dry dock Voyager. Braxton jumps to present day Voyager, where Seven shoots him in front of herself to everyone's confusion. She's pulled back to Relativity because she's about to die, but leaves the other Seven to take care of Braxton. He's caught pretty quickly. The Relativity's First officer pulls Janeway to the ship and sends her back in time to stop Braxton right when all this began, to stop any of this from happening. The XO explains all the Braxtons and Sevens will be stuck back together into one version of themselves.
It's a lot of fun! Yeah it's the episode where they just decide "fuck it, time travel doesn't have to make sense!" but that's fine because it's quite a light hearted episode. The best way to do Trek time travel is probably just to not explain everything and just have cool things like ping pong balls freezing in mid air. Okay 'Timeless' was good too I don't know why I typed that previous sentence. BUT THIS EPISODE IS VERY GOOD.
NERD NOTE: I hate how they use Carey in the past scene in this episode. I mean I actually like it because the actor's pretty good and the character's likable, but I hate how they put Carey in the past so that you think "oh yeah, he was around in season one! It makes sense he'd be in a past scene!" BUT HE'S STILL ALIVE. Carey only died in 'Yeah of Hell' and that was reset at the end of the episode. There's no reason why Carey should be a sign that a scene is set in the past. He should be a proper recurring character. THere should be many proper recurring characters. It's weird and confusing to make him "past guy" without explain what the fuck happened to him in the present day.
SCORE: 9/10
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Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
I figured Carey just got more and more bitter at how good Be'lanna was as Chief and he slid into an alcoholic depression and ended up down on Deck 15 with that antisocial guy from Good Shepherd, making calculations that don't mean much to the ship.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Warhead - Harry is doing "night shifts" (how can there be night shifts on a spaceship? Surely there's just as much chance of fnding something interesting in any given eight hour period?) in command on the Bridge. A cute helm officer (MAKE HER A RECURRING CHARACTER YOU COWARDS) picks up a distress call on a planet. Chakotay lets Harry lead the away team (of the Doctor and a redshirt.) They find the distress call coming from some kind of artificail lifeform that really looks like an unexploded missile. It can talk to the Doctor and Doc convinces Harry to beam it up to Voyager for treatment, even though it's obviously an unexploded missle. The Doc talks to it on Voyager, like 3PO talking to R2, and has to tell it that it's not a real person (it's confused.) Seven finds impact crators and signs of big exposions on the planet. WHAT COULD HAVE CAUSED THEM. Janeway says "a weapon of mass destruction!" in case you don't get it. The Doctor, stupidly, still wants to help the missile because it's "alive" and suggests downloading its AI into a hologram. But it's the AI of a fucking bomb. The Doctor insists that Harry and B'Elanna explain what they're doing to the fucking bomb while they save its fucking "life" and acts like B'Elanna is being rude by thinking this is dumb. The bomb threatens to explode and somehow transfers its AI into the Doctor's program. It's angry that they tried to disarm it because it wants to explode really badly. The bomb holds Harry and B'Elanna hostage and forces Voyager to fly it to its target so it can blow people up. Janeway says they have to find a way to "out-smart a smart bomb." Sigh. Harry blames himself for the bomb being on the ship. He's partly to blame but realy it's the Doctor's stupid fault. Harry tries to convince the bomb that it can have a full life and doesn't have to explode but the bomb really likes exploding.
Neelix tracks down a trader who knows about the bomb. He offers to disarm it but Janeway realises he wants the bomb for himself to sell it. He has an annoying voice. He attacks Voyager when they won't give him the bomb, in an attempt to steal it. Good job, Neelix! The bomb blows his ship up somehow so that all worked out. Janeway decides to fake that Voyager is flying through a mine field to trick the bomb so Seven can get into Sickbay and use her magic nano probes to disable the bomb. Harry and B'Elanna help the bomb recover its missing memory files and it learns that its own people tried to call off the attack on its target. Its orders were rescinded because the war it was fighting ended. But the bomb rejects this information because it really wants to explode and decides this is all a big trick and whines about it. Voyager carries out its fake mine field plan and Seven gets into Sickbay, but the bomb knocks her out. It orders the Voyager crew off Voyager and keeps shouting that it'll blow up if they don't. 32 more bombs show up and offer to take the bomb with them to blow up the target, but Harry tells Janeway that the orders were in error and they can't let the planet be blown up (so Janeway would be fine with the planet being blown up if the orders were real? I know, I know, Prime Directive, but Kirk never would have let a fucking planet be blown up.) Harry and the bombter have the same argument about the fake orders again and this time Harry manages to convince it that the orders were in error and that blowing people up is bad. The bomb decides to sacrifice itself to destroy the other bombs so no innocents will die. That was an awful quick turnaround. The bomb leaves the Doctor's program and blows its former friend bombs up. The Doctor aplogises to Harry for nearly getting them all blowed up. Harry goes back to his night shfit on the Bridge and cute helm girl who we'll never see again tells him all the junior staff see him a hero now or something.
We've already had a sentient bomb episode in Voayger and this one offers nothing new or superior to that one. The AI itself is pretty boring, spending much of the episode whining about wanting to explode. If you're going to do an episode about an AI it should at least be somewhat likable, I think? It's not really convincing at all that the Doctor would be so adamant that this bomb's program had to be saved. It's really not a good episode for the Doctor, as he looks stupid due to his sudden love for a fucking talking bomb, then once the bomb is possessing him Robert Picardo just plays it like the Doctor's in a slightly bad mood. Yeah the part where Harry convinces the bomb not to kill anyone feels like a Star Trek scene, but I just didn't care by that point and it's not really clear why the bomb suddenly overcomes its programming. This isn't horrible but it's not good!
SCORE: 5/10
Equinox: Part 1 - A Federation starship is being attacked and is in rough shape. There's rocks on the Bridge and everything. CGI aliens fly through portals and attack the crew. Voyager picks up a distress call from Captain Ransom (John Savage) of the starship Equinox. Voyager extends its shields around the Equinox and the alien portals close. All the main characters beam over as an away team and find the Equinox in an awful state, with crewmembers sucked dry by the aliens and stuff. One crewman freaks out and tries to shoot Neelix and who can blame him really. Ransome claims the aliens have been attacking them for weeks and they don't know why. Randsom reveals his ship was also brought to the DQ by the Caretaker (so why did the Caretaker test the Voyager crew to see if he could mate with them when he'd already tested the Equinox crew?) The Equinox's first officer Max Burke (Titus "Smoke Monster" Welliver) is an old boyfriend of B'Elanna's and calls her "BLT." B'Elanna has new floppy hair and is weirdly cheery and upbeat here. Equinox's Ensign Gilmore (a girl) hints to Chakotay that she wants to stay on Voyager rather than go home and has alien flashbacks. Janeway and Ransom share stoires of their time in the DQ. 39 Equinox crew were killed by some aiens Voyager never met in their first week in the DQ, which is weird? Why didn't Equinox ever meet the fucking Kazon? Ransom claims they get so far by finding a wormhole. Janeway claims to have never broken the Prime Directive. Ransom and Burke have a secret meeting where it's obvious something dodgy is going on. The aliens nearly attack again. Janeway wants everyone to stay on Voyager but Ransom wants to take his crew back to the Equinox.
Max hits on B'Elanna but really he's doing something evil. Gilmore tells Chakotay and Harry about a device they have that lets you view holo images in your head. Naomi offers to show Gilmore around the ship. Ransom has a secret meeting with the Equinox crew where he tells them of his plan to escape Voyager and makes them promise to do what must be done. Tuvok and Seven bring evidence that Ransom is up to something naughty to Janeway, involving a secret lab he won't let the Voyager crew see. Janeway sends the Doctor investigate (the lab is flooded with radiation or something.) The Doc learns that the Equinox crew have been killing the aliens and doing weird shit to their bodies. Tuvok brings Ransom to Janeway. She's learned that he's been killing the aliens because they can be converted to a substance that makes the ship fly super fast and he needs to kill 63 more of the to bring the Equinox home. Ransom argues he had no choice because Equinox was so badly damaged and so many of the crew dead. There's a flashback showing how they learn of the aliens. They killed the first one by accident, then found out what it could do. Janeway isn't impressed and locks him up. She wants to make friends with the aliens. Gilmore admits she's relieved it's all over. The Doctor's still hanging around on Equinox trying to access its files. He activates the Equinox's EMH, who has had his ethical subrountines deleted and is EVIL. He deactivates our Doc. The aliens attack again as Seven races to deactive the Equinox's alien harming machine to show that they're nice humans. Equinox's EMH breaks out Ransom and the others (Gilmore just goes back to fighting with Ransom which seems weird.) Max and BLT have a FORCEFIELD FIGHT. Voyager's shield go down just as the aliens show up. The Equinox gets away (with Seven and the Doctor onboard.) An alien flies right at Janeway's face!
It's a strong finale! It's interesting seeing another Starfleet crew who've had a worse time than Voyager and lost their humanity, but aren't over the top evil. I like it. Idon't have anythign tos ay.
f
SCORE: 9/10
Neelix tracks down a trader who knows about the bomb. He offers to disarm it but Janeway realises he wants the bomb for himself to sell it. He has an annoying voice. He attacks Voyager when they won't give him the bomb, in an attempt to steal it. Good job, Neelix! The bomb blows his ship up somehow so that all worked out. Janeway decides to fake that Voyager is flying through a mine field to trick the bomb so Seven can get into Sickbay and use her magic nano probes to disable the bomb. Harry and B'Elanna help the bomb recover its missing memory files and it learns that its own people tried to call off the attack on its target. Its orders were rescinded because the war it was fighting ended. But the bomb rejects this information because it really wants to explode and decides this is all a big trick and whines about it. Voyager carries out its fake mine field plan and Seven gets into Sickbay, but the bomb knocks her out. It orders the Voyager crew off Voyager and keeps shouting that it'll blow up if they don't. 32 more bombs show up and offer to take the bomb with them to blow up the target, but Harry tells Janeway that the orders were in error and they can't let the planet be blown up (so Janeway would be fine with the planet being blown up if the orders were real? I know, I know, Prime Directive, but Kirk never would have let a fucking planet be blown up.) Harry and the bombter have the same argument about the fake orders again and this time Harry manages to convince it that the orders were in error and that blowing people up is bad. The bomb decides to sacrifice itself to destroy the other bombs so no innocents will die. That was an awful quick turnaround. The bomb leaves the Doctor's program and blows its former friend bombs up. The Doctor aplogises to Harry for nearly getting them all blowed up. Harry goes back to his night shfit on the Bridge and cute helm girl who we'll never see again tells him all the junior staff see him a hero now or something.
We've already had a sentient bomb episode in Voayger and this one offers nothing new or superior to that one. The AI itself is pretty boring, spending much of the episode whining about wanting to explode. If you're going to do an episode about an AI it should at least be somewhat likable, I think? It's not really convincing at all that the Doctor would be so adamant that this bomb's program had to be saved. It's really not a good episode for the Doctor, as he looks stupid due to his sudden love for a fucking talking bomb, then once the bomb is possessing him Robert Picardo just plays it like the Doctor's in a slightly bad mood. Yeah the part where Harry convinces the bomb not to kill anyone feels like a Star Trek scene, but I just didn't care by that point and it's not really clear why the bomb suddenly overcomes its programming. This isn't horrible but it's not good!
SCORE: 5/10
Equinox: Part 1 - A Federation starship is being attacked and is in rough shape. There's rocks on the Bridge and everything. CGI aliens fly through portals and attack the crew. Voyager picks up a distress call from Captain Ransom (John Savage) of the starship Equinox. Voyager extends its shields around the Equinox and the alien portals close. All the main characters beam over as an away team and find the Equinox in an awful state, with crewmembers sucked dry by the aliens and stuff. One crewman freaks out and tries to shoot Neelix and who can blame him really. Ransome claims the aliens have been attacking them for weeks and they don't know why. Randsom reveals his ship was also brought to the DQ by the Caretaker (so why did the Caretaker test the Voyager crew to see if he could mate with them when he'd already tested the Equinox crew?) The Equinox's first officer Max Burke (Titus "Smoke Monster" Welliver) is an old boyfriend of B'Elanna's and calls her "BLT." B'Elanna has new floppy hair and is weirdly cheery and upbeat here. Equinox's Ensign Gilmore (a girl) hints to Chakotay that she wants to stay on Voyager rather than go home and has alien flashbacks. Janeway and Ransom share stoires of their time in the DQ. 39 Equinox crew were killed by some aiens Voyager never met in their first week in the DQ, which is weird? Why didn't Equinox ever meet the fucking Kazon? Ransom claims they get so far by finding a wormhole. Janeway claims to have never broken the Prime Directive. Ransom and Burke have a secret meeting where it's obvious something dodgy is going on. The aliens nearly attack again. Janeway wants everyone to stay on Voyager but Ransom wants to take his crew back to the Equinox.
Max hits on B'Elanna but really he's doing something evil. Gilmore tells Chakotay and Harry about a device they have that lets you view holo images in your head. Naomi offers to show Gilmore around the ship. Ransom has a secret meeting with the Equinox crew where he tells them of his plan to escape Voyager and makes them promise to do what must be done. Tuvok and Seven bring evidence that Ransom is up to something naughty to Janeway, involving a secret lab he won't let the Voyager crew see. Janeway sends the Doctor investigate (the lab is flooded with radiation or something.) The Doc learns that the Equinox crew have been killing the aliens and doing weird shit to their bodies. Tuvok brings Ransom to Janeway. She's learned that he's been killing the aliens because they can be converted to a substance that makes the ship fly super fast and he needs to kill 63 more of the to bring the Equinox home. Ransom argues he had no choice because Equinox was so badly damaged and so many of the crew dead. There's a flashback showing how they learn of the aliens. They killed the first one by accident, then found out what it could do. Janeway isn't impressed and locks him up. She wants to make friends with the aliens. Gilmore admits she's relieved it's all over. The Doctor's still hanging around on Equinox trying to access its files. He activates the Equinox's EMH, who has had his ethical subrountines deleted and is EVIL. He deactivates our Doc. The aliens attack again as Seven races to deactive the Equinox's alien harming machine to show that they're nice humans. Equinox's EMH breaks out Ransom and the others (Gilmore just goes back to fighting with Ransom which seems weird.) Max and BLT have a FORCEFIELD FIGHT. Voyager's shield go down just as the aliens show up. The Equinox gets away (with Seven and the Doctor onboard.) An alien flies right at Janeway's face!
It's a strong finale! It's interesting seeing another Starfleet crew who've had a worse time than Voyager and lost their humanity, but aren't over the top evil. I like it. Idon't have anythign tos ay.
f
SCORE: 9/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
https://trekmovie.com/2019/09/22/ar...ek-deep-space-nine-dies-at-age-50-fans-mourn/
Aron "Nog" Eisenberg died. He stood out as one of the best characters in DS9, a show with a great regular cast, and was only 50 so this is pretty fucking sad.
Aron "Nog" Eisenberg died. He stood out as one of the best characters in DS9, a show with a great regular cast, and was only 50 so this is pretty fucking sad.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Equinox: Part 2 - That alien flying right at Janeway's face? It just knocks her over and doesn't hurt her. That's pretty lame. Chakotay gets knocked out, but who cares about him. There's some dead redshirts too, and the evil EMH is looking after them as no one on Voyager knows they switched places. Ransom can't activate the Equinox's special engines because Seven has locked him out so he deletes the good Doctor's ethical subroutines (by pressing a few buttons) and the Doctor is INSTANTLY willing to torture Seven. This is pretty problematic when you consider all of the Doc's character development over the years. Turns out he really hasn't evolved beyond his programming, I guess, but why would deleting his ethics make him forget that Seven's his friend and that he has loyalty to her? The Equinox EMH maintained loyalty to his ship. Voyager tries to make contact with the aliens but the aliens don't want to talk. Janeway and Chakotay have one of those arguments they only have in two parters: he wants to trying talking to the aliens again, she wants to hunt down Ransom because she's mad at a human being so evil. Seven won't give up the codes to Ransom despite the Doc hacking her brain. Janeway studies Ransom's service record. Ransom feels sad about torturing a hot woman so hides out in his virtual reality program, but sees a woman in a dress on the beach. The Voyager crew manage to capture the Equinox's Noah Lessing (Rick "Simon The Cylon" Worthy) and another crewman when they beam down to a planet. The Equonix and Voyager have a space fight. Ransom takes the Equinox into the planet's atmosphere. Voyager follows but its shields start to fail, risking that they'll be attacked by the aliens. The Equinox escapes.
Janeway locks Lessing in a room and threatens to let the aliens in if he won't talk. He refuses, thinking Janeway's too nice for that, but Janeway's a monster now and lowers the shields despite Chakotay's pleading. Chakotay goes back in and shoots the alien before it can attack Lessing. He tells them the location of a ship of the aliens who first told the Equinox crew about the aliens. Chakotay tells Kathryn he won't let her cross the line again so she relieves him of duty. Janeway captures the alien (they have a name I'm not going to attempt to spell) ship with a transporter and they let her talk to the portal aliens. They want to kill the Equinox crew in exchange for helping Voyager. Janeway agrees to their deal, much to Tuvok's horror. The lack of his ethical subroutines has made the Doctor start singing in a creepy way and Seven starts singing with him. Ransom listens to the creepy singing and gets sad at the thought of killing a hot woman who can sing. Ransom goes back to the beach and has a vision of Seven in a dress. She tells Ransom to stop being evil. Ransom tells Max and Gilmore that he wants to cooperate with Janeway. Max mutinies against him and Gilmore is always willing to just go along with whoever's in command and is fine with it. Actually no she's lying and tells Ransom she's with him and sets him free as Vooyager attacks. The evil EMH sends Voyager's shield frequency to Max and the Equinox gets the upper hand. Ransom sends a secret message to Janeway offering to beam his whole crew over to Voyager to end this. Janeway quickly goes back to her old self and agrees to work with him. Voyager's EMH ends up back in Sickbay and...he's a good guy now. How did he get his ethics back? I don't like saying "PLOT HOLE" but this is a pretty big one. He deletes the evil EMH. Max and a few goons manage to stay on the Equinox but they're attacked by the aliens. Ransom tells Janeway he's staying behind on Equinox to draw the aliens away from Voyager. Equinox blows up as he goes to the beach one last time. The Doc aplogises for nearly murdering Seven but she brushes it off really easily. Janeway tells Lessing, Gilmore and three other surviving Equinox crewmembers that they're been stripped of rank but will be able to earn her trust again by serving on Voyager. I can't wait to see how they get on! Janeway tells Chakotay he would have had good reason to mutiny against her. She notices the Voyager's dedication plate has fallen off the wall for the first time ever and Chuckles puts it back where it belongs.
In typical Voyager fashion, it doesn't quite live up to the promise of part one. We have parrallel journeys for Janeway and Ransom, but the moment where they meet again doesn't quite work. Janeway goes mad with vengeance and Ransom develops a conscience when he starts hurting a hot woman, the natural conclusion would be a scene where Janeway is about to go too far but Ransom talks her around. Instead he's just like "oh hi I'm good now" and she's just fine with it without any conflict. The emotional peak of the episode should have been Janeway almost murdering Ransom before seeing how far she'd gone, like Picard in First Contact. What was the point of crazy Janeway if she can just kind of go "meh, okay, you're good now!" The Doctor plot is pretty sloppy too and it should be a bigger deal that you can just flick a switch to turn him evil. Anwyay, otherwise it's still a good episode with some of the best spaceship stuff Voyager has done and strong performances from all. So it's a good too parter, just not the great two parter you're been waiting for.
SCORE: 8/10
Survival Instinct - It's the episode written by Ron Moore, fact fans! A Borg sphere containing Borgified Seven of Nine and three other suviving drones crashes on a planet. Voyager is docked at a friendly(!) space station and full of friendly(!) aliens. Janeway's Ready Room is full of gifts including a prehensile plant that tries to grope her. Tuvok bring a list of minor crimes commited by quests to Janeway and Chakotay but Chakotay say it's still better than all the xenophobic aliens they usually meet (meta!) Seven takes her daughter Naomi to the Mess Hall so Naomi can look at all the aliens. An alien presents Seven with Borg artificats which give her a flashback to the sphere crash from the teaser. The alien is in telepathic communication with a Bajoran (nobody thinks it's weird there's a Bajoran onboard?) and another forehead alien. They're the three drones who crashes with Seven. A flashback shows one of them getting his memories back as Seven tells him to ignore them and be a good drone. In the present day the three drones have a secret plan but they all need to agree ("we need consensus") to carry it out. One of them is worried about injuring Seven but agrees to the plant eventually. They try to do something to Seven while she's regenerating but she wakes up and Tuvok runs in to shoot them. In flashback, the four drones continue to have memories of their individual lives, even Seven. She grows alarmed when the others remember their names and how they were assimilated (the Bajoran was in Starfleet and don't ask me if the timeline works with Ro okay.) Present day Seven remembers the three of them. Janway wakes them up and asks what they want. There's a neural link between the three of them and they want to become individuals. They need something from Seven's memories of the crash eight years ago to help them. They need to know how the link between them was created and how they got reassimilated. Seven says she doesn't know but will help them.
The trio tell Seven she should uses a real name instead of calling herself Seven but what right do they have to say that really. They haven't taken their real names back yet because they're so linked together (they finish each other's sentences and stuff.) Janeway gives Tom and Harry into trouble for getting into a bar fight with some aliens. You can see what Moore's trying to do here but it's the kind of scene that would have worked much better with O'Brien and Bashir because they're actually good characters. Seven admits to Janeway that she could get her memories back by linking up with the other three, but doesn't want to risk getting stuck with them and becoming part of a collective again. Janeway asks her if she sees the three of them as family and if so she should help them. Seven asks Naomi if she thinks of her as family and Naomi says yes. Seven feels the same way (aww.) She decides to link with the other three. They have a collective flashback which reveals that the other three wanted to flee the collective when they came to collect them but Seven wanted to go back. They smashed their Borg beacon and went on the run, but Seven tracked them down and reassimilated them, creating the new link between them. The trio freak out at Seven and go into neural shock. The Doctor reveal that if the link is broken the three of them will die in weeks, and after they broke their link in the cargo bay they can't stay linked anymore. So the only way to keep them alive is to send them back to the Borg. Seven talks to Chakotay about the situation. He tells her that life in the collective is no life at all and the trio might prefer a month as individuals. Seven tells the Doc she won't force them back to the Borg again and he must terminate the link betwee them. The Doctor now wonders if she's just doing this out of guilt for what she did eight years ago. Seven argues that they should be able to experience individuality like she and the Doctor have. The Doc is won over. The three are happy to be individuals again and say goodbye to each other. The Bajoran woman decides to stay on Voyager (and hey for once I can't complain about never seeing her again because she'll be dead soon.) Naomi keeps a sad Seven company.
The episode doesn't exactly reveal anything new about the Borg, and you might be all Borged out by now, but it is a strong character episode for Seven. The three guest characters are all quite believable and well acted too. Moore adds some little details that the regular Voyager writers will go on to ignore, like the idea that Voyager could actually meet aliens who aren't xenophobic(!) and could pick up lots of weird alien junk on its journey. That's all really nice and it's a shame he didn't stick around to do more. It's a very good episode unless they're just totally sick of Borg.
SCORE: 8.5/10
Janeway locks Lessing in a room and threatens to let the aliens in if he won't talk. He refuses, thinking Janeway's too nice for that, but Janeway's a monster now and lowers the shields despite Chakotay's pleading. Chakotay goes back in and shoots the alien before it can attack Lessing. He tells them the location of a ship of the aliens who first told the Equinox crew about the aliens. Chakotay tells Kathryn he won't let her cross the line again so she relieves him of duty. Janeway captures the alien (they have a name I'm not going to attempt to spell) ship with a transporter and they let her talk to the portal aliens. They want to kill the Equinox crew in exchange for helping Voyager. Janeway agrees to their deal, much to Tuvok's horror. The lack of his ethical subroutines has made the Doctor start singing in a creepy way and Seven starts singing with him. Ransom listens to the creepy singing and gets sad at the thought of killing a hot woman who can sing. Ransom goes back to the beach and has a vision of Seven in a dress. She tells Ransom to stop being evil. Ransom tells Max and Gilmore that he wants to cooperate with Janeway. Max mutinies against him and Gilmore is always willing to just go along with whoever's in command and is fine with it. Actually no she's lying and tells Ransom she's with him and sets him free as Vooyager attacks. The evil EMH sends Voyager's shield frequency to Max and the Equinox gets the upper hand. Ransom sends a secret message to Janeway offering to beam his whole crew over to Voyager to end this. Janeway quickly goes back to her old self and agrees to work with him. Voyager's EMH ends up back in Sickbay and...he's a good guy now. How did he get his ethics back? I don't like saying "PLOT HOLE" but this is a pretty big one. He deletes the evil EMH. Max and a few goons manage to stay on the Equinox but they're attacked by the aliens. Ransom tells Janeway he's staying behind on Equinox to draw the aliens away from Voyager. Equinox blows up as he goes to the beach one last time. The Doc aplogises for nearly murdering Seven but she brushes it off really easily. Janeway tells Lessing, Gilmore and three other surviving Equinox crewmembers that they're been stripped of rank but will be able to earn her trust again by serving on Voyager. I can't wait to see how they get on! Janeway tells Chakotay he would have had good reason to mutiny against her. She notices the Voyager's dedication plate has fallen off the wall for the first time ever and Chuckles puts it back where it belongs.
In typical Voyager fashion, it doesn't quite live up to the promise of part one. We have parrallel journeys for Janeway and Ransom, but the moment where they meet again doesn't quite work. Janeway goes mad with vengeance and Ransom develops a conscience when he starts hurting a hot woman, the natural conclusion would be a scene where Janeway is about to go too far but Ransom talks her around. Instead he's just like "oh hi I'm good now" and she's just fine with it without any conflict. The emotional peak of the episode should have been Janeway almost murdering Ransom before seeing how far she'd gone, like Picard in First Contact. What was the point of crazy Janeway if she can just kind of go "meh, okay, you're good now!" The Doctor plot is pretty sloppy too and it should be a bigger deal that you can just flick a switch to turn him evil. Anwyay, otherwise it's still a good episode with some of the best spaceship stuff Voyager has done and strong performances from all. So it's a good too parter, just not the great two parter you're been waiting for.
SCORE: 8/10
Survival Instinct - It's the episode written by Ron Moore, fact fans! A Borg sphere containing Borgified Seven of Nine and three other suviving drones crashes on a planet. Voyager is docked at a friendly(!) space station and full of friendly(!) aliens. Janeway's Ready Room is full of gifts including a prehensile plant that tries to grope her. Tuvok bring a list of minor crimes commited by quests to Janeway and Chakotay but Chakotay say it's still better than all the xenophobic aliens they usually meet (meta!) Seven takes her daughter Naomi to the Mess Hall so Naomi can look at all the aliens. An alien presents Seven with Borg artificats which give her a flashback to the sphere crash from the teaser. The alien is in telepathic communication with a Bajoran (nobody thinks it's weird there's a Bajoran onboard?) and another forehead alien. They're the three drones who crashes with Seven. A flashback shows one of them getting his memories back as Seven tells him to ignore them and be a good drone. In the present day the three drones have a secret plan but they all need to agree ("we need consensus") to carry it out. One of them is worried about injuring Seven but agrees to the plant eventually. They try to do something to Seven while she's regenerating but she wakes up and Tuvok runs in to shoot them. In flashback, the four drones continue to have memories of their individual lives, even Seven. She grows alarmed when the others remember their names and how they were assimilated (the Bajoran was in Starfleet and don't ask me if the timeline works with Ro okay.) Present day Seven remembers the three of them. Janway wakes them up and asks what they want. There's a neural link between the three of them and they want to become individuals. They need something from Seven's memories of the crash eight years ago to help them. They need to know how the link between them was created and how they got reassimilated. Seven says she doesn't know but will help them.
The trio tell Seven she should uses a real name instead of calling herself Seven but what right do they have to say that really. They haven't taken their real names back yet because they're so linked together (they finish each other's sentences and stuff.) Janeway gives Tom and Harry into trouble for getting into a bar fight with some aliens. You can see what Moore's trying to do here but it's the kind of scene that would have worked much better with O'Brien and Bashir because they're actually good characters. Seven admits to Janeway that she could get her memories back by linking up with the other three, but doesn't want to risk getting stuck with them and becoming part of a collective again. Janeway asks her if she sees the three of them as family and if so she should help them. Seven asks Naomi if she thinks of her as family and Naomi says yes. Seven feels the same way (aww.) She decides to link with the other three. They have a collective flashback which reveals that the other three wanted to flee the collective when they came to collect them but Seven wanted to go back. They smashed their Borg beacon and went on the run, but Seven tracked them down and reassimilated them, creating the new link between them. The trio freak out at Seven and go into neural shock. The Doctor reveal that if the link is broken the three of them will die in weeks, and after they broke their link in the cargo bay they can't stay linked anymore. So the only way to keep them alive is to send them back to the Borg. Seven talks to Chakotay about the situation. He tells her that life in the collective is no life at all and the trio might prefer a month as individuals. Seven tells the Doc she won't force them back to the Borg again and he must terminate the link betwee them. The Doctor now wonders if she's just doing this out of guilt for what she did eight years ago. Seven argues that they should be able to experience individuality like she and the Doctor have. The Doc is won over. The three are happy to be individuals again and say goodbye to each other. The Bajoran woman decides to stay on Voyager (and hey for once I can't complain about never seeing her again because she'll be dead soon.) Naomi keeps a sad Seven company.
The episode doesn't exactly reveal anything new about the Borg, and you might be all Borged out by now, but it is a strong character episode for Seven. The three guest characters are all quite believable and well acted too. Moore adds some little details that the regular Voyager writers will go on to ignore, like the idea that Voyager could actually meet aliens who aren't xenophobic(!) and could pick up lots of weird alien junk on its journey. That's all really nice and it's a shame he didn't stick around to do more. It's a very good episode unless they're just totally sick of Borg.
SCORE: 8.5/10
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Barge of the Dead - B'Elanna bangs her head crashing a shuttle into the shuttle bay. Janeway calls her "Lanna" like her mother used to. Chakotay reveals that they found part of a Bird of Prey lodged into her shuttle, which is pretty weird! Blood drips from it and B'Elanna hears Klingon noises (you know, angry noises.) Harry thinks it's just because she banged her head. Neelix annoyingly decides to throw a Klingon-themed party to celebrate her discovery and wants B'Elanna to make a big speech (without asking if she wants to do that.) B'Elanna goes to Tuvok for help and he suggests her weird vision was due to her hatred of all things Klingon. He swings a batleth around in front of her and accidentally cuts her face (wait, didn't this exact thing happen in an episode of TNG with Worf and Riker?) Hey it's pretty obvious by now that this is all a dream and I'm proud of myself for noticing. The Doctor and Seven sing that sone Worf sang in 'Way of The Warrior' because they'll use any excuse to let Jeri Ryan and Rober Picardo sing together now. B'Lanna tells Tom that her mother once sent her to a Klingon monestary to learn about Klingon crap. Janeway makes a speech and B'Elanna has a vision of a Klingon warrior stabbing her, then the rest of the crew (another Neelix death for the collection!) B'Elanna then finds herself on the "barge of the dead" where her soul is to be taken to Klingon hell (as a fellow dead guy explains.) She hears the voices of the Voyager crew trying to tempt her to jump overboard. The guy steering the barge tells B'Elanna of a near death experience she had as a child, the first time she nearly came there. B'Elanna briefly believed in him as a child after her mother told her of the barge. Another dishonoured dead Klingon arrives on the barge: B'Elanna's mother herself. At this point B'Elanna finally wakes up in sickbay. Everything since the shuttle crash has been in her head (told you!) The Klingon artifact they found was never real, but B'Elanna still has a cut on her hand which she receieved in her dream (the Doc heals it.)
We get a scene of B'Elanna in her vest asking Chakotay if he believes in the afterlife and it's nice for B'Elanna vest fans. B'Elanna thinks her experience could have been real and wants to look into it further. Mister Vision Quest is actually the rational one hear. B'Elanna keeps researching Klingon beliefs and tells Tom that her mother is going to Hell because of B'Elanna's sins. She can get her mother into Klingon heaven by returning to the barge and taking responsibility for her sins. That's quite a turnaround for someone who's never believed in Klingon crap! B'Elanna goes to Janeway and asks to be allowed to simulate the real death experience and return to the barge. Janeway isn't willing to let her risk her life for this. B'Elanna wins her over by saying she wants her mother to have the chance to get to know her the way Janeway does. Tom isn't happy about all this and wants vest B'Elanna to explore her religion in a safer way but Klingons aren't about safety. The Doc puts her in an induced coma (or whatever) and B'Elanna returns to the barge. She's all dressed up as a Klingon this time. She talks to her mother, who confirms it's all B'Elanna's fault they both ended up on the barge because B'Elanna never learned about her Klingon side. The tedious word "honour" is used several times. Her mother isn't impressed that B'Elanna is going to use a technobabbled technique to take her mother's place then wake up alive on Voyager. The Captain of the barge catches her and B'Elanna tells him she wants to take her mother's place. The Captain says only once they enter Hell (which will take too long and B'Elanna will be woken up before.) They arrive at Hell and in the real world B'Elanna's brain starts to die. B'Elanna "wakes up" in Hell...it's Sickbay. Where the Doctor and Neelix are being weird (Neelix is the ambassador to the recently deceased.) Dream Janeway makes a speech about B'Elanna's lack of honour and so on. Everyone tells her how much she sucks. She sees her mother in Janeway's uniform who says B'Elanna can't free her until she frees herself and the ritual was all meaningless (oh great.) B'Elanna swings a batleth wildly asking everyone to tell her what they want her to be. They say they're not her enemies. She hugs her mother, who tells her she'll see her again...maybe when they get home (so is her mum even dead who knows.) B'Elanna wakes up and the episode ends.
Look, I don't have any believe in the afterlife or much of a spiritual side, so maybe this episode isn't for me. But I have enjoyed episodes of other tv shows that explore similar themes so I don't think that's it. And Roxanna Dawson is great here and there is interesting character stuff for B'Elanna here and some impressive imagery. But ultimately it seems to be an episode about B'Elanna banging her head and going a bit mad for a while? I don't think we're supposed to think her vision of the afterlife is literally true, are we? That would kind of not fit in Star Trek (see 'Mortal Coil'.) Her imagined mother saying "maybe you'll see me when you get home" seems like B'Elanna's subconscious aditting it's all just a dream for B'Elanna to work some stuff out. And I know in real life non-believers do sometimes have near death experiences and become believes. But what does B'Elanna learn here? What's the episode actually about? I don't think it does a good enough job of getting the meaning across. She just freaks out shouting "what does all this mean!" and then gets a hug and it ends. We don't get a scene reflecting on it all. B'Elanna just has a weird dream and I guess comes to terms with the fact that she loves her mother. I don't know. It didn't really work for me but I guess at least there was stuff going on. Why is this paragraph so long.
SCORE: 7/10
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy - The Doctor sings 'La Donna è mobile' to the crew. Tuvok starts crying like Sarek in 'Sarek' as he's begun the Pon farr at last! The Doc changes the words to be relevant to Tuvok's situation ("you have just gone without, for seven years about") and it's awesome. It's all just a daydream the Doc's having and probably the best teaser scene Voyager's ever done. The Doc is angry that B'Elanna won't take him on an away team and files a formal grievance with Janeway. It includes the demand to be made Captain if the rest of the crew are incapacitated. A potato looking alien watches Voyager on his scanner. He tells his superior he thinks he can tap into the ship to spy on them. His superior thinks it's too risky but the Hierarchy tell him to go ahead. The Doc has another daydream and in this one Janeway, B'Elanna and Seven all flirt outrageously with him during a briefing (including Seven texting him "RESIST" when B'Elanna is coming onto him, which is great.) The real Janeway rejects the Doctor's "Emergency Command Hologram" proposal for now but says she'll show it to Starfleet when they get home. The potato alien has hacked into the Doc's mind and is watching his daydreams, believing them to be real (this seems pretty unlikely but just go with it!) The Doc has another daydream (we think it's real at first) where the ship is attacked by the Borg and an "assimilation virus" hits the crew. The ECH is activated and Captain's pips appear on his collar (it's great.) The ECH impresses Seven by taking out drone Tuvok with a nerve pinch and destroys the Borg ship with his "photonic cannon" (it's his cock, isn't it.) Potato tells his superior they can't attack Voyager because of its fearsome photonic cannon. He recommends a steatlh assault. The Doctor sees his daydream of Chakotay in real life.
The Doc has to tell B'Elanna and Seven about his daydream subroutine but they start fighting over him and he realises it's another daydream. The ship goes into warp core breach and the Doc has to save the day, even though he suspects it's all a dream. He tries to walk into the warp core and the others have to pull him away. The daydreams completely take over the Doc's programs and he experiences them constantly. B'Elanna plays his fantasies in Sickbay so Harry and Seven can monitor them (Janeway thinks this is a horrible invasiion of privacy but still goes to take a look.) They watch the Doc paint naked Seven like one of his French girls. They learn about the ECH as well (Harry likes the pip thing.) Janeway feels bad when she watches a fantasy of the Doc receiving a medal from her. Potato guy starts to get worried but his superior won't call off the attack. Potato guy (seriously none of these characters have names) tells his friend that he's found out that none of this is real. B'Elanna fixes the Doc's matrix and he tells Janeway he's embarrassed that everyone's seen his fantasies now. The fixed Doctor slips into a daydream again, but it's because the potato guy is sending him a message through his daydreams. He warns the Doctor of the attack: he's helping out so that the Hierarchy won't learn of his mistake, but also because he cares about the Doctor. His species don't have daydreams so he admires the Doc. The Doc tells Janeway about the cloaked alien ships and proves it real with information the potato provided. He explains that he has to be in command of Voyager when the aliens show up so that his potato friend won't get into trouble. The Doc is nervous about taking command for real but has Janeway telling him what to say. The aliens attack and the Doc has to keep them distracted while Voyager works out how to disable them. There's a fight and the Doc goes off script, ordering Tuvok to activate the photonic cannon (which isn't real!) The aliens run away in fear. The crew throw a surprise party for the Doctor and Seven kisses him (but tells him she won't pose for him.)
It's the funniest episode of Voyager yet. The opening scene alone is a classic and I really enjoy the "activate the ECH" stuff. The plot maybe doesn't make total sense (why did Harry and B'Elanna decide to play the Doc's fantasies in the Holodeck? Just to laugh at him?) but that doesn't really matter as much in a comedy episode. The Doc also gets a nice "we do care about you!" ending.
SCORE: 9/10
We get a scene of B'Elanna in her vest asking Chakotay if he believes in the afterlife and it's nice for B'Elanna vest fans. B'Elanna thinks her experience could have been real and wants to look into it further. Mister Vision Quest is actually the rational one hear. B'Elanna keeps researching Klingon beliefs and tells Tom that her mother is going to Hell because of B'Elanna's sins. She can get her mother into Klingon heaven by returning to the barge and taking responsibility for her sins. That's quite a turnaround for someone who's never believed in Klingon crap! B'Elanna goes to Janeway and asks to be allowed to simulate the real death experience and return to the barge. Janeway isn't willing to let her risk her life for this. B'Elanna wins her over by saying she wants her mother to have the chance to get to know her the way Janeway does. Tom isn't happy about all this and wants vest B'Elanna to explore her religion in a safer way but Klingons aren't about safety. The Doc puts her in an induced coma (or whatever) and B'Elanna returns to the barge. She's all dressed up as a Klingon this time. She talks to her mother, who confirms it's all B'Elanna's fault they both ended up on the barge because B'Elanna never learned about her Klingon side. The tedious word "honour" is used several times. Her mother isn't impressed that B'Elanna is going to use a technobabbled technique to take her mother's place then wake up alive on Voyager. The Captain of the barge catches her and B'Elanna tells him she wants to take her mother's place. The Captain says only once they enter Hell (which will take too long and B'Elanna will be woken up before.) They arrive at Hell and in the real world B'Elanna's brain starts to die. B'Elanna "wakes up" in Hell...it's Sickbay. Where the Doctor and Neelix are being weird (Neelix is the ambassador to the recently deceased.) Dream Janeway makes a speech about B'Elanna's lack of honour and so on. Everyone tells her how much she sucks. She sees her mother in Janeway's uniform who says B'Elanna can't free her until she frees herself and the ritual was all meaningless (oh great.) B'Elanna swings a batleth wildly asking everyone to tell her what they want her to be. They say they're not her enemies. She hugs her mother, who tells her she'll see her again...maybe when they get home (so is her mum even dead who knows.) B'Elanna wakes up and the episode ends.
Look, I don't have any believe in the afterlife or much of a spiritual side, so maybe this episode isn't for me. But I have enjoyed episodes of other tv shows that explore similar themes so I don't think that's it. And Roxanna Dawson is great here and there is interesting character stuff for B'Elanna here and some impressive imagery. But ultimately it seems to be an episode about B'Elanna banging her head and going a bit mad for a while? I don't think we're supposed to think her vision of the afterlife is literally true, are we? That would kind of not fit in Star Trek (see 'Mortal Coil'.) Her imagined mother saying "maybe you'll see me when you get home" seems like B'Elanna's subconscious aditting it's all just a dream for B'Elanna to work some stuff out. And I know in real life non-believers do sometimes have near death experiences and become believes. But what does B'Elanna learn here? What's the episode actually about? I don't think it does a good enough job of getting the meaning across. She just freaks out shouting "what does all this mean!" and then gets a hug and it ends. We don't get a scene reflecting on it all. B'Elanna just has a weird dream and I guess comes to terms with the fact that she loves her mother. I don't know. It didn't really work for me but I guess at least there was stuff going on. Why is this paragraph so long.
SCORE: 7/10
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy - The Doctor sings 'La Donna è mobile' to the crew. Tuvok starts crying like Sarek in 'Sarek' as he's begun the Pon farr at last! The Doc changes the words to be relevant to Tuvok's situation ("you have just gone without, for seven years about") and it's awesome. It's all just a daydream the Doc's having and probably the best teaser scene Voyager's ever done. The Doc is angry that B'Elanna won't take him on an away team and files a formal grievance with Janeway. It includes the demand to be made Captain if the rest of the crew are incapacitated. A potato looking alien watches Voyager on his scanner. He tells his superior he thinks he can tap into the ship to spy on them. His superior thinks it's too risky but the Hierarchy tell him to go ahead. The Doc has another daydream and in this one Janeway, B'Elanna and Seven all flirt outrageously with him during a briefing (including Seven texting him "RESIST" when B'Elanna is coming onto him, which is great.) The real Janeway rejects the Doctor's "Emergency Command Hologram" proposal for now but says she'll show it to Starfleet when they get home. The potato alien has hacked into the Doc's mind and is watching his daydreams, believing them to be real (this seems pretty unlikely but just go with it!) The Doc has another daydream (we think it's real at first) where the ship is attacked by the Borg and an "assimilation virus" hits the crew. The ECH is activated and Captain's pips appear on his collar (it's great.) The ECH impresses Seven by taking out drone Tuvok with a nerve pinch and destroys the Borg ship with his "photonic cannon" (it's his cock, isn't it.) Potato tells his superior they can't attack Voyager because of its fearsome photonic cannon. He recommends a steatlh assault. The Doctor sees his daydream of Chakotay in real life.
The Doc has to tell B'Elanna and Seven about his daydream subroutine but they start fighting over him and he realises it's another daydream. The ship goes into warp core breach and the Doc has to save the day, even though he suspects it's all a dream. He tries to walk into the warp core and the others have to pull him away. The daydreams completely take over the Doc's programs and he experiences them constantly. B'Elanna plays his fantasies in Sickbay so Harry and Seven can monitor them (Janeway thinks this is a horrible invasiion of privacy but still goes to take a look.) They watch the Doc paint naked Seven like one of his French girls. They learn about the ECH as well (Harry likes the pip thing.) Janeway feels bad when she watches a fantasy of the Doc receiving a medal from her. Potato guy starts to get worried but his superior won't call off the attack. Potato guy (seriously none of these characters have names) tells his friend that he's found out that none of this is real. B'Elanna fixes the Doc's matrix and he tells Janeway he's embarrassed that everyone's seen his fantasies now. The fixed Doctor slips into a daydream again, but it's because the potato guy is sending him a message through his daydreams. He warns the Doctor of the attack: he's helping out so that the Hierarchy won't learn of his mistake, but also because he cares about the Doctor. His species don't have daydreams so he admires the Doc. The Doc tells Janeway about the cloaked alien ships and proves it real with information the potato provided. He explains that he has to be in command of Voyager when the aliens show up so that his potato friend won't get into trouble. The Doc is nervous about taking command for real but has Janeway telling him what to say. The aliens attack and the Doc has to keep them distracted while Voyager works out how to disable them. There's a fight and the Doc goes off script, ordering Tuvok to activate the photonic cannon (which isn't real!) The aliens run away in fear. The crew throw a surprise party for the Doctor and Seven kisses him (but tells him she won't pose for him.)
It's the funniest episode of Voyager yet. The opening scene alone is a classic and I really enjoy the "activate the ECH" stuff. The plot maybe doesn't make total sense (why did Harry and B'Elanna decide to play the Doc's fantasies in the Holodeck? Just to laugh at him?) but that doesn't really matter as much in a comedy episode. The Doc also gets a nice "we do care about you!" ending.
SCORE: 9/10
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