Equinox - I know this is up in a lot of people's faves, but I'd forgotten how good it is! There's some great tension between Ransom and Janeway, much of it subtextual rather than in your face. Pretty much every department is about ten times better than usual, with great writing, acting, set decoration and effects. The Equinox really looks like it's been through the gauntlet. Only letdown for me was the Man in Black guy from Lost who had a really odd delivery. It was like he was reading every line off of a nearby wall or prop. But the character was meant to be the least connected with his morals, so maybe it was all intentional. Pity we didn't see the engineer woman ever again as she was really good, as was Simon the Cylon from BSG. Infact, even Chuckles was pretty good in a couple of dramatic scenes where he defied Janeway. Maybe Beltran just needs good material to really shine, I dunno.
The Swarm - Terrible episode that my 15 year old self had told me was good because it had some cool spaceships and bad guys. Both the A and B plots are solved exclusively through technobabble, adding fuck all development or insight into the characters other than reminding us yet again that they know a hell of a lot of boring technical information that Andre Bormanis came up with while taking a dump the morning before shooting began. The only good thing about the episode is that Kes actually gets some lines for a change, even if they are of the aforementioned bullshitty variety. It's a shame, because the central idea of the swarm is a good one, but they just didn't seem to know what to do with it.
