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Wacky Reviews: Star Trek

Author, Author - The Doctor is writing a holo novel. Voyager manages to talk to Admiral Paris and Barclay (yes another forgotten Barclay appearance!) live using some kind of singularity. They get to see a live shot of Earth. Neelix hosts a lottery with the winners getting to phone home. The Doctor wins, of course. (Tom kindly swaps his low number with Harry's high one.) Doc talks to his Bolian publisher who is very happy with the holo novel. Doc shows his novel to Tom Paris, with Tom taking on the role of the EMH on the starship "Vortex." Of course all the holographic crew in the novel are the Voyager cast with minor changes (Chakotay's a Bajoran, Tom has a moustache!) The crew are all horrible to the EMH with the Captain murdering a patient so that EMH Paris will treat another crewman quicker. Tom tells Harry and B'Elanna how terrible it is and they wonder if people in the Alpha Quadrant who play the holo novel will think it's what Voyager is really like. B'Elanna and Harry play the novel too, with B'Elanna having to wear a huge heavy backpack that represents the mobile emitter. Holo B'Elanna is fully human and a bitch. The moustached version of Paris keeps shagging patients. Neelix plays too and Captain "Jenkins" tells him to delete all his unnecessary subroutines (like the sex one.) The holographic vesrion of Seven ("3 of 8") rescues EMH Harry from evil bearded Tuvok and Trill Harry. Even Janeway plays and gets to hear 3 of 8 make a speech about the EMH deserving equal rights to organics. Janeway isn't amused and confronts the Doctor with the others. The Doc claims the novel isn't about life on Voyager (even though all the characters look almost exactly like the Voyager crew) and is purposely over the top. Janeway wonders if the Doctor feels impressed but he says his "brothers" in the AQ are the real victims as they've been repurposed to mine for Dilithium and scrub plasma conduits. Harry finally gets to speak to his parents, who ask when Janeway is going to give him a promotion. The conversation is cut off by a solar play and Harry is upset, then says Seven would understand if she had a family. Fuck you, Harry.

Tom rewrites the Doctor's holo novel to teach him a lesson. The Doc takes the role of a medical assistant on a fake Voyager. He's told off by an exaggerated version of the EMH, who wears a bad wig, drools over the fake Seven and basically drug rapes her. The Doctor yells at Paris for destroying his work of art (Tom saved the Doc's story really.) The Doctor claims Tom's novel is an unsubtle farce that makes him look like a rapist, but Paris points out the character in his story isn't the Doctor because he's got hair! Tom says he thought he'd won the Doctor's respect and was hurt by how he was portrayed int he Doc's novel. Neelix tries to get the Doc to send his own "holo cook book" to his publisher. He tells the Doc that he loved his holo novel but then makes the Doc see that he can make changes to it so it isn't so obviosly based on Voyager and its crew. The Doc calls his publisher and asks for extra time to make revisions to the story. The Doc apologises to Tom for his portrayal and asks for his help in rewriting the story. B'Elanna agrees to speak with her estranged father. He apologises for walking out on the family twenty years ago and asks to get to know her again. Barclay tells Admiral Paris about the Doc's holo novel, which has already been published. Paris calls Janeway and tells her that thousands of holosuites are playing the novel and its portrayal of Voyager is very negative. Janeway calls the publisher and asks for the novel to be pulled, but he says holograms have no rights and he can do what he wants. Janeway tells the Doc she'll stand up for his rights. A hearing takes place over subspace. Tuvok argues for the Doctor, claiming that the Doctor deserves an artist's rights because he created the novel. The judge says that only applies to people and the Doctor is no person. Janeway says they need to tell the Doc's real story to the judge. Seven tells how the Doc taught her to be more human, Barclay tells how the Doc helped save the life of Zimmerman, Janeway tells about tha time the Doctor commited mutiny (but leave out that she didn't punish him because that still makes no sense.) It's a good scene though. Seven tries to give her call time to Harry as she's been watching everyone's conversations and undestands that people like their families now. He tells her to call her aunt instead, who tells her about Seven staying with her for a week as a six year old (really? I thought Seven was on the Raven since she was basically a baby? Wouldnt you be able to remember being away from your parents for a week aged six?) The judge rules in the Doc's favour and has the holo novel pulled. The Doc gets working on his revisions, even though he'll have to find a new publisher. Some EMH miner holograms in an asteroid mine (how did they get holo emitters in there?) talk about the Doc's novel.

This is an episode I remember hating when it was first on. I think maily because of how over the top the Doc's novel was (how could he still feel so repressed after all this time?) and especially the ending with the EMHs now being miners and that not really making sense and looking stupid. I will say that I've softened on that hate, watching it back now, as there's a lot of good here. For a start it's nice to have a season 7 episode that actually tries to be about something, even if it squeezes a bit too much in. As over the top as the Doc's holo novel is, it is still fairly amusing, as is Tom's revision. But we did see something pretty similar before in 'Worst Case Sceneario' and even 'Living Witness' so let's not give this aspect too much praise! Once the episode gets in to trying to prove the Doctor should have rights I think it hits on some good stuff. And it was only a couple of episodes ago where Harry completely ignored the Doc's request to have more command subroutines created so maybe it is understandable that the Doc would still have resentment towards the Voyager crew, even if I don't think he'd be quite stupid enough to create such poorly disguised evil versions of them. The scenes with various characters getting to phone home are all pretty good. The ending shot...is still pretty stupid. Why would they reprogram highly specialed EMHs to perform a simple task like swinging a pitchfork when they could just create mindless miner holograms? Or just use robots. That could never end badly.

SCORE: 7/10
 
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Friendship One - Janeway talks to an English Admiral who has a mission from Starfleet for her: Earth launched a probe named "Friendship One" three hundred years ago and it just happens to have ended up on Voyager's flight path. Well, near enough, it takes a few days to track it down to a planet. The away team of Chakotay, Paris, Harry, Neelix for some reason and the long thought dead JOE CAREY need inoculated to protect against radiation first (I'm guessing this will be important later.) Tom talks B'Elanna into staying on Voyager because of the radiation. The planet is a nuclear wasteland with big old missile silos all over the place. We learn that Carey has a wife and child back home, which puts his horniness for Seven in 'Relativity' in a new light! Tom, Neelix and Carey find the probe but are captured by aliens in radiation suits. Another attacks Chakotay and Harry on the Flyer. They shoot anti-matter weapons at the Flyer so cowardly Chakotay runs back to Voyager. The alien leader, a guy with radiation burns, contacts Voyager and accuses them of being guilty of genocide. He wants his people to be evacuated from the planet by Voyager. Janeway talks to the guy who Chakotay found on the Flyer, who claims to be a doctor and he was trying to find something to neautralise the radiation poisoning his people. He explains that his people started using anti-matter after Friendship One and believes that Earth purposely set them up to be radiation poisoned so they could invade. Three hundred years ago. It's a pretty flimsy argument, as Janeway points out it would make no sense to poison a planet they wanted to invade. (The missile silos were never used, it was a red herring I guess.) Tom tries to bond with a pregnant lady but she tells him all her previous babies were stillborn.

Tom, Neelix and Carey start to suffer from radiation sickness as their inoculations wear off. Tom and Neelix try to bond with an alien child. Neelix tries to convince the alien leader that humans are actually nice. He brings up his own history with the weapon that destroyed his planet. Janeway tells the leader they can't evacuate everyone but she can help the doctor heal his people. He doesn't trust her and shoots Joe Carey dead before allowing his body to be beamed back to Voyager. Yep, they brought him back for that. On Voyager, the alien Doctor is healed by, GUESS WHAT, nano probes. He still believes Earth is responsible for what happened to his world, even if it wasn't intentional. Seven tells him he'd be a better leader for his people than Shooty Guy. Tom helps deliver the lady's baby and saves its life when it doesn't have a heartbeat. Tuvok launches a rescue mission, with the EMH disguised as one of the aliens. The away team are free, but Tom takes the newborn baby to Voyager with him for treatment. Neelix and Tom convince Janeway to help the people of the planet, despite their leader being a dick. Voyager and the Radiation Doctor mass produce the treatment for the poisoning. The leader still pointlessly argues that this is all a plot by Voyager. He then ridiculously starts shooting nuclear missiles at Voyager because he thinks the cure being launched into the atmosphere is another attack. New mother stops him and the cure works. Janeway and Chuckles look at a model Voyager in a bottle made by Carey (in an attempt to give him a personality they've given him some of Picard and O'Brien's backstory.) Janeway literally says that the urge to explore can't justify the loss of lives, wether it's millions or just one. And that's how the episode ends.

This isn't a terrible idea for an episode. The idea that Voyager would find a planet that's been ravaged by mistakes made by Earth is decent. You could get a good episode out of that. Most of the episode though is just like a TOS season 3 episode with a boring hostage situation and one dimensional bad guy. This isn't quite terrible either though. It's not good, but it's not what makes this episode so reviled. There's two reasons for that. First is bringing Carey back just to kill him and what this says about Voyager's treatment of "recurring" characters. We haven't seen this guy in the present day since season one. We had reason to believe he was dead! So expecting us to care when he dies now is foolish. Then worst of all is the ending. Janeway's "risk ISN'T our business" moment. I mean yeah it would be great if no one ever died when exploring space, but there's always going to be the risk of it. That Janeway would just outright say that Starfleet's whole mission statement is flawed? Who thought that was a good idea? (Michael Taylor and Bryan Fuller, apparently, two writers who you'd think would know better.) So this all adds up to one of the worst episodes of a medicore season.

SCORE: 2/10


Natural Law - Chakotay and Seven are heading to a conference on an alien planet (why waste time on conferences at this point) but their shuttle hits some kind of energy barrier crashes (after Seven shoots a hole in the barrier.) Chakotay and Seven head through the nice alien jungle looking for a way out (he's injured.) Tom Paris arrives at the alien conference in the Flyer (there's a nice shot of the alien space station thing) and a traffic officer gives him into trouble for speeding. He has to take piloting lessons with a space driving instructor. Chakotay and Seven spot a primitve native humanoid species in the jungle. The natives find Chakoay and smash his badge. They treat his wounds by waving plants over it. Of course Chakotay would make friends with the space Indians. They even play vaguely American Indian music like it's season two again. He and Seven sleep in a cave with them. Tom meets his stuffy driving instructor. Chakotay destroys the Prime Directive by teaching language to the natives, just say they can give him directions. Seven goes off by herself to do something. The natives start copying Chakotay's face tattoo. Seven gets caught in a storm but a native kid gives her a blanket. Is the plot ever going to start? Stuffy driving instructor examines the Flyer and tells Tom it breaks spae driving laws.

The native kid helps Seven get where she wants to go. Seven's hair is down and all messy and that's the redeeming thing here. The kid makes Seven look at a waterfall. Oh I guess Seven was looking for the crashed shuttle (they beamed out.) Voyager finally notices they're missing and discovers the energy barrier. One of the advanced aliens explains to Voyager that some other aliens put up the energy barrier to protect the natives from them. They don't know how it works. Chakotay meets up with Seven again and she has a plan to use the shuttle's deflector to get through the barrier. Chakotay doesn't want the natives helping because he's concerned they've already been influenced. Tom continues with his driving lesson. It's literally pointless. Chakotay and Seven bring the energy barrier down but the kid touches the shuttle and gets shocked. Chakotay's beamed up but Seven stays to help the kid. The more advanced aliens send an expidition in now that the barrier is down. They promise to improve the lives of the natives but Seven looks worried. Hey, it's the plot. Chakotay wants to put the barrier back up. Janeway tells the advanced aliens to evacuate and they agree after a slight protest. But then one of their ships attacks Voyager and warns them to leave. Tom's still on his driving lesson, so Janeway gives him orders to beam up the expidtion and the shuttle's deflector that's still on the planet. The driving instructor complains about Tom's erratic flying and fails him. Which means nothing since they're leaving anyway. Seven tells Chakotay she's concerned about the natives because the others will bring the barrier down eventually using her technique. He just shrugs.

It's really pretty boring for the most part. It's just Seven and Chakotay walking through the jungle and sometimes there's space Indians there. We don't get any real plot until the last few minutes and even then it's underwhelming. Janeway just does that predictable Starfleet thing and that's that. The Tom subplot is stupid but I guess mildly amusing. Like, really mildly. Also if this was supposed to hint at a romance between Chakotay and Seven then it failed because I didn't get those vibes from them at all. There's only three episodes to go so you'd think they'd want to do more exciting episodes than this before the end. But that wouldn't be Voyager!

SCORE: 3/10
 
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Homestead - Neelix and taller Naomi Wildman (only the second time she's appeared this season) put on a First Contact Day party in the Mess Hall. Neelix tries to get Tuvok to dance to one of Zephran Cochrane's favourite songs (no it's not Ooby Doob because I guess they didn't want to pay for it. Voyager detects Talaxian lifeforms in an asteroid field and Neelix, Tuvok and Paris go to investigate in the Delta Flyer. They get hit by something and crash land on a 'roid. Neelix wakes up in a bed being treated by a Talaxian lady (Dexa.) She doesn't trust outsiders and wants to know why Neelix hangs out with aliens. She has an annoying son named Brax and it's revealed that Neelix is being held behind a forcefield. Janeway talks to the asshole alien miner who claims to own the asteroid field and won't let Voyager enter it. Neelix pretty easily talks his way out of his cell and Dexa shows him around. The Talaxians have been working for years to convert the asteroid to a home after fleeing the war. Dexa conveniently has a dead husband. Neelix is a bit sad when she lets him leave with Tom and Tuvok, but they find Brax stowing away on the Flyer and Neelix has to take him back. He overhears an asshole minor ordering the weak-willed Talaxian leader (Oxilon) to leave as the asteroid is scheduled for demolition. Neelix kicks some ass when they rough up Dexa. Neelix takes them to Voyager to see if Janeway can make a deal with the assholes. Brax is shown around Voyager and Chakotay and Harry pretend Neelix is important.

Brax goes off with Naomi and Neelix works on seducing his mother. Dexa tells Neelix how they were placed in a restricted zone on the planet they settled on, but her husband fought back against the asshole running that place and was killed. Nobody wants Talaxians around. Janeway negotiates with the asshole miners. Oxilon is useless, but Neelix comes up with an idea. Naomi tells Brax about Tuvix but doesn't mention that Janeway murdered him (also Naomi wasn't even born then? Seems weird that someone told her that story given how it ended.) Neelix's plan fails and Dexa and Brax leave, with the brat moaning "you said you were going to help us!" to Neelix. Neelix tries to find a new home for the Talaxians, but Tuvok "hypothetically" suggests they'd be safer staying on the asteroid and defending themselves there. Tuvok adds that Neelix should be the one arranging the asteroid's defense and admits that Neelix is the most resourceful individual he's ever known (that seems unlikely.) Janeway lets Neelix return to the asteroid in his little ship (it would be a Prime Directive violation if Voyager helped.) Oxilon still doesn't want to fight back but Neelix makes a rousing speech about how it's time to stand up for themselves. Neelix and Dexa kiss before the fighting begins. The Talaxians get their shield up and running after a pretty good spaceship battle scene where Neelix lays some emitters. The Delta Flyer arrives to save Neelix because to Hell with our Prime Directive! (Remember when Tom got demoted and imprisoned for 30 days?) Neelix says a sad goodbye to his new friends despite Brax asking him to stay. Neelix drops by Naomi's quarters (umm, does she not live with her mum? Does she still have a mum?) who tells Neelix she doesn't need him to tuck her in as she's not a little girl anymore. Neelix talks to Janeway over coffee. He's going to ask her if he can leave the ship, but she tells him that Starfleet needs a permanent ambassador in the Delta Quadrant: Neelix himself. She's willing to let him stay for the greater good of Starfleet. The next morning Neelix heads off to his new family, with the Voyager crew lining the corridors to say goodbye. Tuvok waggles his foot a bit in a form of dance as a concession to Neelix and tells him to "live long and prosper." And...it totally works for me and as much as I am enjoyng Picard and I do with Star Trek still had moments like this rather than Icheb getting his eye pulled out.

Neelix is a character who was initially deeply annoying, but over the years he was toned down and the writers learned home to use him. Sometimes he'd still feel pretty pointless but he wasn't dragging the show down or anything. Ethan Phillips is a good actor and it's nice that he got a proper sendoff of his own. The episode is decent overall. It's weird that there's Talaxians so far from home and no one even asks how they got there (at one point Brax asks why they can't just go home and Dexa says it's because of the occupation of their homeworld...not that their home is 40,000 light years away.) The whole ready made family with the widow and son just waiting for him feels like a huge cliche but the woman playing Dexa is pretty good (Brax...not so much.) What elevates the episode is how well Neelix's character is written here and absolutely that final moment with Tuvok dancing for him. Goodbye, fuzzball.

SCORE: 7.5/10


Renaissance Man - Janeway and the Doctor are in a shuttle together, so of course he's being annoying and singing while she's drinking coffee. B'Elanna is called away from whatever she's doing with Vorik (he's back! For some reason!) to a romantic picnic with Tom, but she stands him up. Janeway returns in a damaged DF and calls a secret meeting with Chakotay. She tells him that some secret invisible aliens are going to dismantle Voyager unless they give up their warp core and settle on a planet. She's agreed to their terms. Wait, really? Janeway orders B'Elanna to make some weird modifactions to the DF's tractor beam. Chakotay and B'Elanna think Janeway is acting strange and she confirms it by talking to herlelf on the Bridge. Chakotay and Seven get a message from the evil alien who wants them to eject their warp core. The Dox tells Chakotay he's scanned Janeway and she's perfectly normal. Chakotay does the old "remember what happened on Fake Planet 38" trick and finds out Janeay's an imposter. She knocks him out with a hypo and beams him to the morgue. We find out that "Janeway" is actually the Doc in disguise. The real Janeway's been captured by the Hierarchy potato aliens from 'Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy.' They let her talk to the Doc and she tells him Voyager can't give up its warp core. The potatoes shut her up and order Doc to steal some gel packs too. Turns out one of the potatoes is good and one is bad, just like last time. One wants to let Janeway go but the other thinks they'll get rich with scheme (they've been kicked out the Hierarchy.) The Doctor impersonates B'Elanna next and steals some gel packs. Tom arrives with chicken and kisses "her." The Doc is disgusted because Zimmerman programmed him with gay panic.

The Doc impersonates Chakotay as Seven and Harry have tracked the evil alien transmission down to the Holodeck. Chakotay Doc has to hypo Harry next and stick him in the morgue too. Tuvok figurs out the Doc's treachery next but the Doc runs through walls to escape him. The Doc hides in a Holodeck full of identical replicas of himself, which is a cool visual for a few seconds. The Doc switches to Emergency Command Hologram mode and ejects the warp core. The Doc tries to escape in B'Elanna mode and does a Matrix style run up the wall flip to escape Tuvok, which is funny! Doc tractors the core to the potatoes in the Flyer. The evil potato abducts the Doctor too because he's just that evil. Doc explains his actions by telling Janeway that Voyager can survive without a warp core but not without its Captain. Chuckles and Harry are found in the morgue at last. Would anyone have noticed if they'd been left there? The Doc leaves a secret message for Voyager encoded in his piano recital with the location of the potato ship. The potatoes want to use the Doc to steal things for them. The Doc's program starts to break. Tuvok and Tom arrive in a shuttle and steal the Flyer back. The bad potato is going to detonate Voyager's warp core to kill them but the Doc and the good potato stop him. Why were they friends when one was good and one evil? Janeway and the Doc return home but Doc thinks he's about to die as his matrix is breaking up. He makes a speech admitting to all the bad stuff he's done, like criticing Harry's saxophone playing. He tells Seven how hard it was not to check her out while examining her which umm what. Doc hides out in Sickbay after his confessions but Janeway invites him to the Holodeck with her.

I understand the impulse to do one last comedy episode before the end, let the cast have a good time. I didn't actually like the DS9 Vegas episdoe much (seriously it's boring) but at least the cast had fun! This seems to be Voyager's attempt to do the same thing...but it just feels like a normal episode. There's some funny parts (pregnant B'Elanna running up a wall) but Voyager's done funnier episodes in the past. This episode should have been more wacky and out there rather than just feeling routine. It's like a less funny combination of the ECH episode and the one where the Doc was in Seven's body. Nobody here is as entertaining as Jeri Ryan was playing the Doc so what's the point, really? I mean it's a pefectly fine, even good in places, episode I just...don't get it? This is the second last episode ever? It'll do, but it should have been more. Actually that's perfect for Voyager...

SCORE: 6/10
 
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Endgame - Voyager is home! It flies over the Golden Gate Bridge as fireworks go off. It's actually the tenth anniversary of Voyager getting home and it took them 23 years. Janeway is old and haunted. There's a reunion party where Captain (lol) Harry Kim meets Naomi's daughter (is Icheb the dad?) The Doctor has a blonde wife. His name is Joe. Tom writes holo novels now because "Tom likes the Holodeck" is one of his few personality traits. Old lady B'Elanna...looks kind of hot? Janeway has sent Tom and B'Elanna's daughter on a secret mission. Barclay makes a toast "to the journey." He teaches a Borg class at Stafleet Academy and seems to have been cured of his autism by Voyager? Admiral Janeway appears as a guest speaker in his class but doesn't want to answer questions about Seven of Nine. Admiral Janeway visits Tuvok, who has gone mad because the writers love giving Tuvok some kind of mental disability. Janeway tells him she has to go away and may never see him again. She kisses his head. The Doctor gives Janeway a physical and she asks him to get her some drugs. She says goodbye to Reg and visits Chakotay's grave (the Native Americna type music plays when his name is shown, which makes me laugh for some reason.) Back in the present day at last, B'Elanna tells Tom the baby is coming and we get the sticom cliche of the father not knowing what to do. And it turns out to be false labour anyway. Chakotay tells Janeway that Chell wants to take over as chef from Neelix. He then goes on a picnic date with Seven and urgh I don't buy this at all. Icheb beats Tuvok at the Vulcan Jenga game and Tuvok is worried. He visits the Doctor and we learn that he's already in the early stages of his brain disorder.

Seven plays Kadis-kot with Neelix over subspace. He tells her he's thinking of asking Drexa to marry him. Seven and Harry detect thousands of wormholes in a nebula and Harry's excited as always (Tom: "Who knows, Harry, maybe it'll lead right into your parents' living room!") In the future, Tuvok is ranting about Janeway going missing. The Doc doesn't know what's going on and asks Barclay if he knows where Janeway is. Barclay's stammer returns because he knows where Janeway is and eventually tell the Doc. Admiral Janeway meets up with Ensign Torres and some Klingons (she dismisses Torres quickly.) The Admial speaks to a weirdo Klingon who she helped get a seat on the High Council. He refuses to hand a mysterious object of mystery over to her. In the present day, Voyager enters the nebula and nearly flies into a Borg Cube. The Borg Queen (ALICE KRIGE) tells the Collective to let Voyager go but keep an eye on them. The nebula's full of Cubes but Harry whines about not giving up. He tries to convince Tom to go off on a crazy scouting mission in the nebula. Chuckles asks Seven out for dinner again and I just realised that between him and Icheb-Murdering-Lady it's now cannon that Seven makes terrible romantic choices. Seven tells the Doc she wants her cortical node removed so she can feel all the emotions, man. In the future, Admiral Janeway offers to give up Starfleet technology for "the device" but actually just steals the device from him and flies away on her Batmobile armour equiped shuttle. Captain Harry Kim catches up with her and wants to arrest her, just like Geordi did to future Harry in 'Timeless.' The Admiral tells Harry her plan will work (we still don't know what it is yet) but he thinks it's too risky. She asks him to trust her. Present day Seven beams into Chakotay's quarters and they kiss. Yet Robert Beltran still hated the episode. Captain Harry helps Admiral Janeway because he's still her bitch. If it's not obvious by now, the Admiral is travelling back in time. She's attacked by the Klingons but Harry's ship saves her. The Admiral arrives in the past and orders Captain Janeway to close the temporal rift she just flew threw before the Klingons follow her. The Borg Queen is intrigued by this!

The two Janeways talk in the Ready Room. The Admiral only drinks tea now, the first sign that she's evil. The Admiral tells the Captain she has to go back to the Borg nebula as it can take her home (how does the Admiral know this? She's from a future where Voyager never used that nebula.) She says there will be many more deaths in the next sixteen years if Janeway doesn't use the nebula. The Doctor proves the Admiral's identity and tells him about a neural interface he invented that let's her fly her ship with the power of her mind. Voyager begins installing the upgrades the Admiral has brung which will help them fight the Borg. The Borg Queen appears to Seven in her head and tells her she's always left Voyager alone because she loves Seven so much. What. She literally assimilated Janeway, Tuvok and Torres a year ago! She warns Voyager to stay away from the nebula. The Admiral convinces the Captain to stick to the plan. Chakotay tells Seven he plans to shag her when they get home. Voyager deploys its Batmobile armour and enters the nebula. The Borg attack but Voyager has new super torpedos that can blow up a Cube with one shot. We discover there's a "transwarp hub" in the nebula and that's what will take Voyager home, but Captain Janeway isn't happy the Admiral didn't tell her it was there and orders Tom to take them out. So all those thousands of drones on the Cubes Voyager blew up died for nothing. Captain Janeway wants to destroy the Hub because it's one of the Borg's most powerful weapons. The Admiral tells her it's impossible to destroy the Hub and getting Voyager home is all that matters. She thinks destroying the Caretaker Array was a mistake now. She tells the Captain that Seven will die and it'll destroy her (urgh) husband Chakotay who also dies. And Tuvok's going to go mad. The Captain confronts Tuvok who tells her he'll be fine for a few years but the only cure (a mind meld with a family member) is in the Alpha Quadrant. He didn't tell Janeway because destroying the Hub and saving millions of lives is more important (and quotes Spock who I guess went around saying "the needs of the many..." all the time.) The Admiral tells Seven she's being selfish for valuing the lives of others over her own (or something, the Admiral's kind of mad.)

The Captain tells the senior staff that they'll only destroy the Hub if the whole crew (well, the important characters) agree to it. Harry makes his famous "maybe it's about the journey!" speech which we'll all be mocking by the end. The Admiral tells the Captain she was wrong to lie to her and wants to help her carry out her mission. The Captain thinks there's got to be a way to have their cake and eat it too. The Admiral says there may be a way but it's very risky. The Admiral goes off on her shuttle after saying goodbye to the Captain. Seven doesn't want to be sexy with Chakotay anymore because she know she's going to die and it will hurt him if he's in love with her. This scene's supposed to be sad but I'm not invested in their relationship at all and I don't buy this sudden character chance for Seven. B'Elanna goes into labour for real and tells Tom to report to duty rather than stay with her because he's their best (only?) pilot. The Admiral projects a message to the Borg Queen using her implant and tells her she'll let the Borg live if they help Voyager get home. She even agrees to give up her future tech to the Queen. The Queen knows this is bullshit and captures and assimilates the real physical Admiral Janeway. But somehow the assimilation infects the Queen and the Borg and they start blowing up and stuff. The Queen pulls her own arm off. The manages to send one Sphere after Voyager as it flees through a transwarp conduit after destroying the Hub (or whatever.) The Queen dies saying that if Captain Janeway dies it'll mean the Admiral won't be able to travel back in time and none of this will happen. Err, it's not going to happen anyway because the Admiral's from a completely different timeline. The Borg conduit thing opens near Earth. The sphere flies through then Voyager comes bursting out of it. Admiral Paris (with Barclay) hails them and no the episode can't even give us one moment of him and Tom talking. The baby is born and Tom goes to see it, with Chakotay taking the helm. Janeway tells him to set a course for home, the final shot is Voyager flying towards Earth with "EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS RICK BERMAN AND KENNETH BILLER" appearing on screen before we can even take it in.

So that's it. After seven seasons we end with...a really medicore finale. You could say that's appropriate for Voyager, but I know they could have done better. Voyager had its share of great episodes over the years. This episode takes stuff from one of them ('Timeless') as well as TNG's classic finale 'All Good Things...'' because Voyager's writers are obsessed with time travel. We also get the Borg one last time and they feel more routine than ever, even with Alice Krige back as the Queen. It's an episode that tells the story of how Voyager got home but tells us nothing of what happens after (sure we get the future scenes, but they're erased by the end!) It would be like if DS9's finale had ended when the Dominion War did, crosscut with Sisko falling off a cliff, and not told us anything of what happened next. Not to mention that DS9 did a whole ten episode arc to give us closure whereas last week Voyager was just another silly comedy episode. It ends up feeling like they just wanted the show over with so they could move on to Enterprise. "THERE, IT'S EARTH, THE END, HAPPY, NERDS?" One of the only bright spots of the episode is Kate Mulgrew doing her best acting for a while playing two versions of Janeway. She manages to convince you she's really talking to a different person in the scenes with the Janeways together. If we got a really strong story with the two Janeways pitted against each other that might have made up a little for the abrupt ending. Sadly we get a really poor copout of a story! To compare it to Avengers: Endgame for a moment (they have the same name and both involve time travel!) imagine if that movie had an older version of Tony Stark travel back in time from the future, kill Thanos and save everyone else...and our version of Tony lived and the only character to die was this old guy we just met. Would it have been the biggest movie of all time then? I don't think so! But that's what happens here. Captain Janeway wonders if there's a way they can have their cake and eat it too...and there is. The only person to die is an alternative version of her who we just met. No one we care about has to sacrifice anything to get Voyager home. And what about the future timeline that's now erased? What about Naomi's daughter who'll now never be born? Nobody brings it up, not even future Harry who literally fucking met the daughter at the start of the episode. The only moral debate we get is "should we destroy the Borg or go home?" and they resolved it by saying "let's just do both!" Harry's "it's about the journey" moment is laughable (and his acting's as weak as ever) because the episode says the opposite. And I think I've made my feelings about Chakotay/Seven clear above so let's not get into that. Anything else good outside of Kate Mulgrew? Well there's certainly some impressive special effects and explosions if you like that. Krigee has a couple of moments where she's a bit creepy and it's cool when she rips her arms off. But really I can't imagine that even people who have Voyager as their favourite Trek would be satisfied with this as a finale. I can't imagine many were wiping away a tear at "set a course for home" being repeated. It's ironic that Neelix got a better sendoff than the rest of the crew. It was the one time this season that Voyager actually wrapped something up before the finale. Imagine if they'd been doing that for the last several episodes and we got to see Voyager back home for at least the entire finale (and something actiony could happen like the Kazon showing up to attack Earth or something.)

SCORE: 3/10

Goodbye, Voyager. Even though I complained about you a lot you did have a lot of great episodes in there. And I did enjoy watching a good old fashioned often light-hearted Trek again in this age of serialised darkness from Discovery and Picard. I'll watch Enterprise sometime I guess!
 
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Future of this thread:

Star Trek: Enterprise
Kelvinverse movies
Discovery but only when it finishes airing new episodes
Picard but same

So basically once I finish the Kelvin movies it could be a few years before I do Disco.
 
I was looking for "Picard" on my other device-the one that the "I" and "k" and comma key don't work. So I type in Pcard and "For the love of Spock" comes up. (On Netflix) So I am watching that now and enjoying it.
I think I will find Picard on Amazon Prime if not directly from CBS site. I will watch it after all have already watched it and then I will read the thread, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER THING I WATCH AROUND HERE!

This Spock special is really good though.
 
He liked it more than I did but it's an okay episode? I don't know, it didn't seem anything special to me but sometimes I don't see things the normals do.
 
Enterprise

Broken Bow - The episode starts with a young boy asking his dad when the Vulcans are going to let them fly at warp 5. Then we get "30 years later" and I suppose that's the answer. A Klingon is chased through a field on Earth by two aliens of a species we haven't seen before. He hides in a silo, the aliens slide under the door (they have bendy powers), he jumps out and blows the silo up. A human farmer shoots him with a LASER SHOTGUN. IT'S BEEN A LONG ROAD holy shit this is a weird choice for a Star Trek opening. I mean I kind of like the idea of the visuals tracking human space flight development. But the song lol. Trip flies Archer (I'm not going to pretend I don't know their names) around the Enterprise in a shuttle. Archer is called to Starfleet Medical on Earth. The Vulcan Ambassador Soval won't tell the humans much about the Klingon (the human Admiral calls him a "Klingot" lol omg.) The Klingon is some kind of courier. The Vulcans want to delay the launch of the Enterprise until the Klingon situation is sorted out. The alien doctor (it's Phlox!) says there's a chance the Klingon could survive but the Vulcans want to let him die because of Klingon honour. Archer is disgusted. A Vulcan lady calls Archer "volatile" and he says she has no idea how much he's restraining himself from knocking her on her ass. Kind of proving her point there, Archer. The Enterprise will take the Klingon back to Kronos even though Soval thinks it's a mistake. Reed (he's the security officer, obviously) complains about the lack of good weapons on the Enterprise to Mayweather. It's quickly established that Mayweather was raised on cargo ships and that's all the character development we'll get for him for four seasons. Archer visits a lady named Hoshi who is teaching alien language to kids and gets her to agree to join his crew now by playing a sample of Klingon language. That's actually a pretty good inroduction. On the Enterprise, Archer tells Trip that the Vulcan lady (T'Pol) will join them on their four day trip to Kronos (because the freaking Klingon homeworld is only four days away at Warp five!?) T'Pol doesn't like the smell of Archer's dog Porthos. Admiral Forrest makes a speech before the launch of the Enterprise and credits Zephran Cochrane and Archer's dad henry for its engines. Then we get a recording of actual James Cromwell as Cochrane making a version of the "seek out new life" speech. It doesn't feel like as big a deal as it should. The Enterprise is launched and we get a good look at it for the first time. I'm not super nerdy about spaceshps but it does look like a 24th century ship to me. A member of the bendy species we saw before talks to a blurry hologram that looks like a Romulan to me.

Phlox has joined the crew as doctor, mainly because he's the only person who knows how to look after the Klingon. He does a weird big special effects enhanced grin. This is not a good introductioin for Phlox. Mayweather is sitting in the Enterprise's "sweet spot" and introduces Trip to it. (Do we ever see this again? Do we ever see the friendship between these two again?) They talk about aliens with three breasts. Archer, T'Pol and Trip have dinner together (the Enterprise has a chef SEE IT'S A PRQUEL NO REPLICATORS.) She tells them off for still eating meat. Hoshi isn't great with space travel and T'Pol asks if she wants to lie down. Hoshi swears at her in Vulcan. The Klingon wakes up and the translator won't work, so Hoshi has to do it manually. The Klingon talks nonsense because his brain is messed up. The Enterprise drops out of warp and the lights go out. Some kind of shimmery cloaked alien is in Sickbay with them. He can walk on the ceiling. Archer shoots him but another aliens somehow abducts the Klingon. T'Pol thinks they'll just turn around and go home but Archer insists they'll get the Klingon back. He tells T'Pol off for disrespecting him in front of the crew and rants about how the Vulcans kept the warp 5 launch back so far that his father died before it. Phlox does an autopsy on the alien and reports he's a "Suliban" but one who's been genetically altered to give him special abilities. Trip and T'Pol work together to find the Klingon but T'Pol just says it won't work and stuff so Trip does his own round of complaining about Vulcans. Hoshi pciks up some proper nouns from the Klingon including "Rigel" which T'Pol reluctantly reveals is the planet the Klingon was last spotted on. The Suliban have drugged the Klingon and find that he was to meet a Suliban female named Sarin on Rigel so they head there too. The Enterprise sends and Away Team (all the main characters but Phlox) down to Rigel 10. Trip thinks he's spotted an alien rape but T'Pol tells him it doesn't concern them so I guess it was fine. Reed and Mayweather watch some naked alien women eat butterflies.

Trip yells at an alien women for hurting her son but she's actually weaning him onto oxygen. Archer and Hoshi are grabbed by Suliban and find Trip and T'Pol have been captured too. Archer meets Sarin the Suliban, who looks like a hot human woman. The strokes Archer's face and kisses him because that's how she "measures trust." Yeah, okay. She switches to her Suliban face to drop some exposition: the supplied the Klingon with proof that the bad Suliban Cabal are trying to sew chaos in the Klingon empire. They're taking orders from the future as soliders in a termporal cold war. The evil Suliban attack and Sarin gets our heroes to safety. Her purpose served, she's shot dead by the bad guys. Archer and friends are chased to the roof by the Suliban and there's a snowy phaser fight. T'Pol finds the shuttle (there's a bit where Mayweather has to say "I found her!" as a punchline and the delivery is bad) and everyone gets away (after Archer is shot in the leg.) T'Pol takes command with Archer injured. Archer has a flashback/dream to flying a model ship. Phlox tells T'Pol and Trip they have to use decon tell because they're the two sexiest cast members (or they were exposed to an alien fungus whatever.) They rub gel on each other and it's a really shameless attempt be Berman and Braga to insert some sexiness into Trek. And yeah T'Pol's hard nips and Trip's bulge are nice and everything but the two characters don't check each other out or have any kind of sexual tension so it just come across as stupid. Like they're having a normal conversation but covered in gel because people liked Seven of Nine in her catsuit. We get Archer in his underpants too but at least that makes sense as he's in Sickbay. He's pleasantly surprised to discover that T'Pol has them chasing the Suliban ship rather than heading back to Earth. She thinks it's foolish but as acting Captain she followed Archer's wishes. MAYBE SHE'S NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL EH. Archer records a Captain's log which he keeps pausing to ask if he can trust T'Pol. He returns to the Bridge where the trail left by the Suliban ship has gone cold, until T'Pol does some clever science thing to find out there's actually fourteen Suliban ships hiding in a gas giant. The Enterprise flies inside and finds hundreds of Suliban ships attached together in a kind of base (it's a pretty cool concept.) The Suliban chase them again but the Enterprise uses it's grappling hook(!) to capture one of their ships. Mayweather gives Trip a crash course on flying the Suliban ship.

T'Pol warns Archer that it's a terrible idea for him and Trip to go sneaking about in the Suliban ship. Reed gives Archer a new weapon: a phase pistol. It has two setting: stun and kill. They can't say "phaser" for nerd reasons you see. Archer and Trip dock with the other Suliban ships in their combined space station thing. Meanwhile the Enterprise is attacked. Archer and Tripl save the grumpy Klingon and have a phase(r) figh with the Suliban. Trip and the Klingon leave but Archer stays behind but seems pretty crazy. Hoshi uses her SUPER EARS to find Trip's ship and rescue them. Seriously Hoshi has super ears. It's literally a thing. T'Pol thanks her in Klingon and Hoshi says "you're welcome" and tumblr would be shipping it. Archer finds the room where the Suliban leader talks to Future Guy. T'Pol and Trip clash over going back to save Archer. The Suliban leader tells Archer he knows everything about him and tries to shoot him, but time slows down (for some reason) and Archer dodges the shot. Trip has to beam Archer out because there was no other choice. I guess it was established earlier that the transporter is scary. Archer and Hoshi take the Klingon to the Klingon High Council on Kronos. The secret data was hidden in his blood all along! The Klingons seem happy enough. Archer tells Trip and T'Pol that their mission will continue and a Vulcan ship will be arriving to take T'Pol home...unless she stays as his Science Officer. He wants to get over his dislike of Vulcans. He orders Mayweather to fly through an ion storm because "we can't be afraid of the wind." THE END.

It's an okay first episode but pretty dull and forgettable. Like I remember things about the TNG, DS9 and Voyager pilots much more clearly than I remembered this. It's a prequel series and we get a bit of scene setting with the stuff back on Earth and Cochrane's (disappointingly bland) message, but the episode really just wants to rush us to the Enterprise's launch. So we don't really know how long Starfleet's been around, what they even do, how many ships Earth has or much at all about the current state of affairs. Once we're in space, does it really feel like a prequel or just like any other Star Trek? I mean I liked the grappling hooks and the ship seems smaller and everything's a bit less formal than in, say, TNG, but they sure got to Kronos (and eveywhere else they needed to go) fast. The biggest weakness here is the characters. I remember I was kind of excited that Scott Bakula was going to be the lead of a Star Trek because I'd been a big Quantum Leap fan when I was young. His acting though...it's fine. He's a decent actor. But he just feels like a guy? Every other Captain has felt larger than life in some way. Bakula just completely lacks the gravitas of Patrick Stewart or Avery Brooks. The "knock you on your ass!" line doesn't ring true at all. T'Pol is okay here, but nowhere near as good as Tuvok in Voyager (really the Voyager crew were so much better than the Enterprise crew at the start, which makes it all the more frustrating how Voyager squandered their potential.) Trip is the best in the first episode as he shows the most sides to his character. Hoshi starts off decent but then just keeps moaning about being space. Phlox, AT THIS POINT, is just weird. Mayweather talks about fucking women with three breasts and yet still comes across as the blandest man alive (how did he get cast, really?) Reed is English. Then there's the pathetic decon scene. Where it beats the other pilots is in special effects. The Suliban combiner ship thing is cool and the shoot out in the snow looked pretty nice. The Klingon was played by the guy who was Zeus in the WWF so that's cool. Look it's a perfectly watchable episode of tv but I can't say I loved it!

SCORE: 6.5/10
 
All i remember is that Klingon running around in the beginning and thinking 1) what the hell is going on and 2) Klingons didn't look like that back then, to believe Worf in Trials & Tribble-ations when he acknowledged that SOMETHING happened to them at some point in the timeline.
 
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