Okay, from here on – it should be downhill as I’m halfway through the seasons. Although, since Voyager has very variable season lengths I’m not sure if I’ve passed the halfway episode mark. But it must come soon, mustn’t it? Read about the previous report over here.
Message in a BottleOkay, after the previous few episodes, here we have a stone-cold classic. Thanks to the handy-dandy super-massive communications network tapped into by 7 of 9 (and a big hello to all you Hirogin out there), Voyager finally reaches communications range with Starfleet. Albeit, one ship on the outer fringes of the Alpha Quadrant. As its not responding, for some reason it’s easier to beam the Doctor’s complex programme all the way there than, say, a video message or something. Not that I’m complaining as what follows is a mix of comedy and drama, that perhaps should be called Doctor Hard – as the Doctor, along with an EMH Mk2, have to rescue the USS Prometheus from its Romulan captors.
EMH Mk 2: Now with 50% more holo-hair follicles
There is some other stuff going on, but the vast majority of the episode is left to Andy Dick and Bob Picardo to strut their stuff. A real reminder that when Trek mixes comedy with the drama, it can turn out some of its best episodes. I had, truth be told, seen this one a few times before, but it held up very well for another viewing. Even Mrs Llama enjoyed watching it with me – high praise indeed! And importantly, from this point forward – Voyager might still be 60,000ly from Earth (still?!?! Have they been not moving since Kes threw them forward in The Gift?) but there’s an increasing chance that Starfleet will be able to contact them again.
Khaaaaaaan! Well, one of his sidekicks
Just a shame 7 pissed off the Hirogin in the process of establishing the communication link. That’s never going to come back to bite them, is it…
HuntersI’ve been increasingly noticing that this season of Voyager has been extremely referential. Okay, maybe this is the culture and media scholar part of me spotting that all cultural outpourings are palimpsest, reworkings of things that have come before. Mostly Voyager has been drawing on TNG homages, but for the next couple of episodes it’s demonstrable the cinematic world of scifi. So, first up is Voyager’s tribute to the movie Predator.
Ostensibly this episode’s main story is about the aftermath of last episode’s communicative contact with receipt and decoding of a battery of personal messages from Starfleet, via the Hirogin array(1*). Cue my single favourite moment of the whole episode as Janeway reads her ‘Dear Kathy’ letter in abject silence while the camera slowly creeps towards her. A nice piece of nuanced emotions play across Kate Mulgrew’s face in this scene. It’s often been noted that TV acting is all about the facial close up, and here that maxim is expressed in spades. Elsewhere, the funniest moment has to be Neelix being told he gets to be the ‘postman’ for the messages, since Starfleet lives in the 24th Century where apparently the ability to email documents direct to people’s personal computers has ceased to exist, while interstellar communication is commonplace. Yeah, I recognise the writers going “How can we ram it home that Neelix is utterly valueless? Let’s give him a job that no one needs to do!”
The action part of the plot is the full introductions of the predatory (HAH!) Hirogen hunters, who capture Tuvok and 7, and go into a long torture-porn homage of how they’re going to pull out their intestines and bones and display them. Throughout this sequence no one asks the question I had burning in my mind: the Hirogin aren’t that advanced…how did they build the inter-quadrant communication array? Was it in fact, built by some other super-advanced progenitor race who might have the kind of super technology based around harnessing black-holes that could take the Voyager home? The fact no one asks this blinding obvious question, is a serious omission, and one that I’ll hold out minor hope for being addressed in later shows(2*).
Like all fanbois, this Hirogen wants unrestricted access to 7 of 9’s internal organs
Harry Kim, by the way, is once again poorly served by a tertiary subplot about wanting a letter from his mummy and daddy. The writers just reminding us that despite obvious appearances, Naomi Wildman is not the baby of the crew. With her accelerated aging, doubtless she’ll make Ensign before Kim too. I like Harry, but clearly the showrunners hate him, as I can’t remember the last time he had something to do that wasn’t moaning about something, mooning over 7 or being patronised by Janeway.
Inappropriate touching!!!
Prey
Monster-movie-mashup continues with…Alien. It also continues the Hirogen arc, as two Hunters take on the most dangerous prey…man…borg…Kazon (HAH!)…oh okay, dodgy CGI species 8472. Despite blasting the escaping fluidic alien with enough energy to kill even Neelix’s insufferable joie-de-vivre, it still manages to kick their armoured asses. Cue Voyager picking up the injured Hirogen, played by the always wonderfully deep-voiced Tony Todd, and learning more about the hunter’s species and their ways. Tony Todd for me immediately elevates anything he’s in regardless of the show’s quality, be it as the voice of Zoom in the Flash, CIA Director Graham in Chuck or importantly, Jake Sisko in DS9. His addition to Voyager in this episode is no exception to the rule.
I forget…what’s the ship’s name?
But wait, I said this was Alien, not ‘let’s all learn more about each other and have enemies become friends’. The aforementioned still-kicking 8472 (let’s call him Frank) manages to get slice his way into Voyager, causing Janeway to almost have a bout of apoplexy as she puts everything on alert and turns all the power up to 11. While the Voyager crew go on their bug-hunt, Frank keeps trying to open up singularity so he can pop back home into fluidic space. I suspect opening a black-hole down on B deck’d do untold wonders for Voyager’s structural integrity and Harry Kim’s collection of dolls. Notably, despite Frank’s hitherto celebrated powerfulness – no member of Voyager’s crew gets exed nor even grows the same facial mold as Harry Kim. Odd that.
“Sarge, is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”
Eventually, more Hirogen chums turn up, and the Alpha Hirogen escapes from sick-bay, engages in a spot of Greco-Roman wrestling with Frank, only for the pair of them to be beamed onto the Hirogen vessels by 7. This flagrant breach of protocol and direct violation of the Captain’s orders by the ex-borg crewman, sees 7 severely slapped down by being sent to bed without supper for a week and no space pr0n. Honestly, the writers really are doubling down on the ‘Voyager as a family, and Kathy as the mom’ meme this season. Okay, 7 is actually restricted to the cargo bay (until such a time as the plot needs her not to be – I give it a week) with no computer access. Not that I want to second judge Janeway’s increasingly erratic and Starfleet protocol-violating command decisions, but doesn’t Voyager have a perfectly functional brig for just such an occasion?
RetrospectOkay, who had 3.34 secs before 7 was released? Yep, we couldn’t even keep her in the hold for a whole episode, as Retrospect focuses on her, which is rather poor planning on the showrunners’ part. Then again, by now I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the showrunners are idiots, so I accept this narrative decision with a shrug. This episode is best described as ‘Raaaaaape innnnn Spaaaaaace’, as following an encounter with an alien arms merchant (Kovin) 7 of 9 gets a bit ‘hands on’ and punches his lights out. Why, we all cry, as do the crew of the Voyager. Thankfully we’ve got (untrained and unlicensed) psychotherapist simulation the Doctor on hand to take us back through 7’s repressed memories of an earlier encounter with Kovin where he…violated her. Okay, this PG-12 TV, so no rape (or even mental rape, as we had with Troi back in TNG: Violations) is depicted, but he does “penetrate” her to remove her frequent McGuffin, Borg nanoprobes. Hence, 7’s anger it seems stems from a genuine personal violation, at the hands of a suddenly very (understandably) defensive Kovin.
Lie still my pretty, while I suck out your natural…fluids!
As things turn out, the accusation, despite all the initial evidence is a false one, and Kovin didn’t diddle 7’s assimilation-tubules (ooh-er) after all. But since, pretty much everyone’s been after him, he flees in a tiny, crappy but heavily armed ship – which promptly blows up after he tries to fire all weapons on Voyager. If only he’d opened the antimatter injectors to 120%, none of this tragedy would have happened. When WILL people learn… Cue the 7 discovering the ‘joy’ of remorse, and the Doctor asking Janeway to Ctrl+Alt+Del his operational subroutines so he can forget (no, you can’t, it’s all part of the human journey, Doc). Shame he can’t drink or go on a vision quest, that’d soon sort him out. Of course, we must remember that none of this tragedy would have happened if the crew had relied on their standard protocol for psychological trauma, a vision quest with Tacotray! Although, for once, I’m glad we dispensed with this mystical bollox in a SciFi show, since as things goes it delivered a none too bad ‘did he do it’ mystery.
The Killing Game: PtIJaneway’s a Klingon! No, wait, she’s white suited Liza Minnelli running a bar during WWII for alien nazis(3*)! Okay, despite the confusing cold open, it turns out that between episodes the Hirogen have gotten annoyed at being ignored for a whole story and have captured the Voyager. Now they appear to be using the holodecks with a brain-washed crew to act out complex combat storylines on Kronos and WWII. The crew’s memories of who they are have been wiped, although what is not explained is how they all now have detailed knowledge of the characters they are playing. Hirogen technology is nothing if not unexplained and variable in advancement. Although, they clearly don’t have holodecks and must rely on the Doctor to patch up the crew when they’re injured during the simulations.
The most exciting moment all episode
Meanwhile in the ‘real’ world, only Harry Kim, the Doctor and an unspeaking NPC crew member who is likely to be red-shirted at any moment, are kept awake to keep the simulations and the ship running. Poor old Harry, as I said earlier, he’s ‘enjoying’ one of the ‘Harry suffers misery’ plotlines, which will as per normal have no long term ramifications. Meanwhile, in between Mademoiselle de Nerf serenading(4*) us like Lt Gruber from Allo Allo, and Neelix riding a bike around awkwardly (honestly he nearly falls off repeatedly) Janeway leads the French resistance in preparations for the arrival of the US Army. Naturally, even this is all part of the Hirogen’s programme, although since they’ve taken the holodeck safety protocols offline there’s little surprise that something unexpected is going to go wrong. Which it promptly does when ‘Capt’ Tacotray’s US Army division blows a hole in the side of the holodeck into the ship itself. It makes for a dramatic closing shot, although I’m still not clear how they’ve expanded a single room to cover several decks without utterly compromising the ship’s structural integrity. Also…how did Harry Kim and one NPC ensign do all this structural work?! Guess we might find out in part two!
The Killing Game: PtIIOnce again we run into Trek ‘difficult second episode’ syndrome. It’s affected even the best stories over the years, even TNG: BoBW, the second part is seldom the match of the first. Here in The Killing Game’s second episode, the interesting diversion we’ve taken starts falling apart at the scenes, rather like Voyager itself. Honestly, the ship’s a total wreak, how will they ever fix it up enough by next week, I’ll never know (4*). Essentially this one runs out its time with lots of back and forth, as Janeway and 7, with the help of Harry unmindwipe the crew, and then with the aid of a holographic army retake the ship. Meanwhile, in the B-plot the Hirogen Commander and his second in command tussle over the ideological impasse they’ve reached – with the former wanting his species to hunt holographic prey, while the other feels this is a bad idea and they should stick to their good fundamentals. Like stalking, killing, skinning and boiling down for soup anyone they take their fancy too.
“And just what is it which makes you think we’re the bad guys in all this?”
Interestingly, like many Star Trek races before them, the Hirogen undergo narrative diminution in this story. With the exception of the Kazon, who were always crap. Anyway, in the Hirogen’s first appearances they were GIANTS, 7 foot tall and more. There are a couple of big ones, but now they all appear to be of average height. Guess there were a limited number of tall actors on call. Additionally, they and their armour are no longer impressive. A couple of rounds from a replicated replica of a WWII army rifle are enough to kill their Commander. I’m sure in earlier episodes the Doctor went on about how biologically touch they were. Next time they appear, I assume, they’ll be vulnerable to papercuts. At the end of the day, Janeway brokers a truce, provides the holographic tech the Commander wanted (shame he didn’t live to see it in use) and remarks on “Casualties on both sides“. Really? No Starfleet crew appeared to die on screen, so am I to assume we’ve lost some redshirt NPCs who will be unmourned and unmissed? My god, you don’t think they’ve killed off Samathana or Naomi Wildman do you? I mean, they’ve not been on screen for ages – and that’d be terrible!
Okay, not terrible, risible. That’s the word I’m looking for.
Vis à VisI almost choked on my tea when this episode opened, with Tom Paris remarking how “Nothing’s happened for weeks” and how he’s bored. I guess we’ve had a major time skip to passover all the funerals and extensive space-dock time the Voyager must have had to end up looking all shiny and new. Either that, or the writers weren’t talking to each other by this point in the show, and continuity had gone down the nearest Jeffrey’s tube! Anyway, an alien flying an experimental super-warp (coaxial) drive ship turns up with a few problems, and poor old bored Paris who once again is slacking his duties gets assigned over there to help him sort through his problems. Alarm bells were ringing doubly for me here. When Tom was sloppy before, it was all actually part of an undercover mission, with it being later established that he’s reliably very good at his job – so chalk one to lazy retroactive characterisation. Additionally, last time Tom started fucking around with advanced-warp drive technology…he become a lizard’s father. So this all bodes really, really well for this story!
“I never liked your hair style!”
Turns out, we’re back in film homage territory, with Voyager’s take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The visiting alien, by the name of Steth, claims to be a test pilot and offers to take Tom on a ‘romp across the cosmos‘ (or words to that effect). Tom’s having enough trouble at work and his relationship with B’Elanna, so he declines. Shockingly the dodgy acting alien steals Tom’s likeness and dumps the transformed Starfleet officer aboard his discarded ship for ‘Mr Tom’s Wild Coaxial Warp Ride‘. Cue not-Tom acting up on Voyager, swinging between romantic and then hyper-aggressive with his lady love, not to mention attempting to mack on to 7 too. His odd behaviour doesn’t go unnoticed, and culminates during an interview with Janeway with him full on trying to strangle her! Come off it not-Tom, why not Neelix? Of course it’s all a ruse as he’s now stolen Janeway’s body, but thankfully transformed-Tom and other previous hosts turn up to put the record straight and jump everyone back into their own bodies. Actually, I rather enjoyed this episode, partially because Tom is a great character and well acted, and additionally because we didn’t insist on partnering with Harry all episode. And secondly because it was a solid slice of Trek soap-opera, which even (slightly) moves Tom and B’Elanna’s romance forward. Although, one is left feeling that they only advance their relationship in the face of terrible traumas!
The Omega DirectiveSadly this is not the crossover with Galaxy Quest that the title hints at, for shame. When every PADD and screen on Voyager suddenly gets the OSOD (that’s the Omega Screen of Death) Janeway and 7 must collude to save warp travel as we know it from the hyper-explody Omega particle. So terrifying is this creation of science, that ONE particle alone wiped out warp travel in a space sector by kablooying subspace forever. Oh noes! Leaving aside how stupid it is for something that is (a) supposedly top secret and known to captains only and (b) is announced across the ENTIRE ship(6*)…there are a smattering of some good bits in this episode, but they’re as rarefied as the particles themselves. Okay, yes it’s yet another ‘7 and the Captain’ two hander as one learns the limits of individuality, and the captain grows…older? I dunno, Janeway hardly seems changed by these encounters. Despite this, it’s a classic Star Trek romp against the dangers of the unknown/things man was not meant to know!
Janeway’s curiously Omega symbol shaped conference table’s been a dead give-away for years!
Of course, dull alien species of the week has created millions of these particles which means the Voyager team get to totally ignore things like the Prime Directive or Starfleet ethics and rob them of it. Remind me again why Janeway gets made an admiral at the end of all this, and Picard doesn’t? While 7 wants to keep the particles as a pet (since they are the Borg’s idea of perfection), Janeway makes her flush them down the space toilet…but not before for a few seconds, the particles form into something..beautiful. And that’s that, aside from even MORE 7 and the Captain in Master Di Vinci’s room (no John Rhys Davies, as he costs too much for a cameo)for a discussion on spirituality. Don’t say that too loud girls, Tacotray will butt in, like he does whenever there’s a whiff of anything mystical!
UnforgettableOh sweet zombie jeebus, it’s another Tacotray story. Is it really that time again already? Can’t we have another one about Neelix suffering instead? No, what we have is the Voyager coming across (ooh err) a mysterious bounty hunter lady (aka a tracer) from a race called the Ramuran, who’s had a torid love affair with everyone’s least favourite Native American Starfleet officer. EW! Anyway, Kellin explains that her race, the Ramuran, live such a closeted life that they have (somehow) evolved pheromones that make anyone they meet forget about them after a while. Hence, poor old Tacotray can’t remember anything about this apparent love of his life, but she knows all about him, right up to his food preferences, side he dresses on and his deep love of flamenco dancing. That last one might be a fabrication, but I forget…
Tacotray is visibly soooo into her – not!
Tragically, just as Tacotray rekindles his forgotten romance, the aforementioned tracer-lady turns out to be on the run from her society herself. And wouldn’t you know it, another tracer sneaks onboard and ker-zaps her with a memory wiping ray. Oh the sweet, delicious and downright hilarious irony as now she forgets all about Tacotray, and he’s the one remembering for them both. Or at least until she buggers off with the tracer, but not before they load a virus into Voyager’s computer core to wipe all electronic traces of them too. But not all is lost, thanks to Neelix’s hot java, and Tacotray’s pencil and paper teen-diary, where in he writes down all the hot sexy times he had with Kellin, before he forgets her once more. Aw, that’ll keep him warm on those long lonely nights before his inevitable, and repulsive, romance with 7 of 9 two or so seasons hence.
Can’t help that Kellin got the best deal. Unforgettable? Sheesh, I’d love to forget I ever watched this episode.
Living WitnessWhisper it. This is one of the truly great episodes of Voyager, and perhaps unsurprisingly, centres on the Doctor (don’t they all?). Or at least…a copy of him, and the crew. It tells the gloriously distorted tale, 700 years after Voyager’s visit, of their impact on the planets of Kyria and Vaska. I say distorted, because Janeway’s got action hair and evil black gloves, Tacotray’s had a collision with a henna party and the Doctor appears to have fused with Data. It’s all a beautiful framing tale, where through a combination of deliberate propaganda, revisionist historical research and error, that the noble Starfleet crew have been painted as marauding warmongers in a historic simulation. Kate Mulgrew in particular chews the scenery with delightful relish, but you can see pretty much the whole cast having fun playing their evil twins. Mirror Universe, without the Mirror Universe if you will. Best line of episode without a doubt simulated-Tom Paris’ retort to simulated-Neelix.
“Watch your mouth, hedgehog!“
Actually, I suspect that line wasn’t an historical artifact. Due to shenanigans at the time of the ship’s encounter with the planets, a copy of the Doctor was stolen from the Voyager, and it is this which is reactivated to become the titular living witness. Naturally, the Doctor slowly puts the museum’s curator and the record straight, but sadly this uncovers underlying simmering ethnic tensions between the two local sentient races. Civil war breaks out, and just as we’re about to see how the Doctor can act to stop it…the episode jumps forward many generations to tell us in a brief coda how things all worked out. It’s a nice but rather truncated ending to a fascinating examination of how history and your actions get distorted over time, especially when viewed through the prism of modern sensibilities. Much as I enjoyed this one, I do wish they’d made it a two parter – more evil crew action, and a proper resolution to the Doctor’s story. All the same, well worth your time spent watching it.
Evil-Janeway considers who to execute first.
Demon
Harry Kim gets some time in the limelight, although as normal, his ol’pal Tom Paris is along for the ride. Voyager comes across a Y (AKA Demon) Class planet…a planet so deadly, even orbited it would eat the hull plates! A type of planet so hostile to life, even 7 of 9 can’t strut about unharmed! A type of planet that Starfleet have long wished to explore but lack the technology. Hence, it takes all of 10 minutes before Janeway and crew have rubbed some Savlon on the hull plates of a shuttle, and vaselined up a couple of space suits so Tom and Harry can wander around on the surface unharmed and mine liquid deuterium. And if that’s not enough fun, Voyager goes to Blue Alert (which does mean changing the bulb) and lands as well.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_gZ_7sdZg]Hello? Internal consistency called, and asked you to try and at least stay true to your own (wacked out) crazy physics logic! Honestly, the episode spends so long telling us how deadly these types of planets are, and in minutes it’s all hand-waved away so we can go romping around the surface without a care in the world. Unsurprisingly, once down there we end up with ANOTHER Harry Kim duplicate story, as a silver mimetic-space fluid (Tom, did you get more excited than I thought?) replicates the two crewmen. Eventually, we find the originals, and it turns out the silver fluid just wants to be loved. Or experience consciouness. One of them. At which point Janeway says “Hey, let’s duplicate the entire crew, that’ll be a spiffing idea and won’t in anyway utterly breach the prime directive and violate every single person aboard’s essential self-identity“.
Sunny with a slight chance of acid rain, and body duplication
Okay, okay, there’s a line about “Checking everyone’s cool with it”, but then seconds later the Voyager lifts off, leaving behind 130 odd duplicates. Either Janeway’s the most persuasive speaker ever (hah, no evidence of that!) or the whole crew just goes “Okay, Captain. I didn’t need to be unique anyway”. Guess they’re all a real bunch of individuals.
OneI liked this better when it was called ENT: Doctor’s Orders. No, honestly – I’ve seen this all before, ship has to pass through deadly-through-shields region of space, crew all go into stasis save for One (ho ho) immune character, said character starts going batshit crazy and hallucinates, day is saved by burst of speed out of death zone, it was all (mostly) a dream.
Once again – Harry Kim’s main/only role is to be the face of suffering
Okay. One was broadcast in 1998, fully 7 years earlier than Doctor’s Orders, so for once it’s not Voyager that’s ripping off someone else’s plot. However, given I saw the Enterprise episode not so long ago, this one felt really flat. Speaking of flat, unlike Phlox, we are not treated to a naked Jeri Ryan wandering around the ship with the Captain’s pet dog (or Harry Kim, who I assume plays the role of Porthos). Shame. Anyway, it’s not a terrible episode, but since I’m already fed up with 7 of 9 centric episodes this season, I could have lived with any other member of the crew staying awake in her place. Even Neelix, since his best episodes of his are those where he has to face his own inner fears without the ability to switch to cheerful denial through slavish servitude to the rest of the crew. A missed opportunity.
Hope and FearColour me shocked on a number of levels, as this was a pretty decent episode to round the season out! Okay, it’s bookended by yet more scenes of Janeway and 7 of 9 in their sometime pseudo-maternal relationship working out together. And yes, while 7 wears a slinky catsuit, Kathy wears a smock. But the rest of the episode, not bad at all, and kudos for not giving us a cliffhanger but a done-in-one storyline. This week the crew stumbles across an advanced federation ship, the USS Dauntless (NX-01A…er…isn’t that Enterprise?) after a superfriendly linguistic alien called Arturis (Ray Wise, another RoboCop alum) finally reconstructs the message from Starfleet received earlier this season via the Hirogen’s network. Cue the discovery of a slipstream drive that could get the crew home. For once, Janeway manages to look this gift horse in the mouth and gets ultra-suspicious of everything coming up Millhouse suddenly all at once.
Impractical AND Tasteless. Well done.
She’s right, because it turns out the Dauntless is actually Arturis’ ship, disguised by holograms. Turns out his race got nommed by the Borg, as a direct result of Janeway and co helping the assimilation-happy cyborgs overcome Species 8472. Whoops! Hence, while he’s not keen on 7 as a former drone, he positively hates Janeway and crew and had planned to drop them all in the lap of the Borg to see how much they like getting assimilated! When his ruse is discovered, he manages to whoosh off, with Janeway and 7 aboard, but the Voyager rescues them just in time…and he’s the only one left to get assimilated. Sadly, Voyager’s slipstream tuneup only gives them an extra 300ly (so, still 59,700ly to go then) before it essentially would have wreaked the ship. Bet they’re wishing they’d not gotten rid of all those Borg add-ons from the start of the season now!
Starfleet’s all about the pointy now. Disks are SO last generation.
There are, as this is Voyager, some clunky bits. Torres and her engineering team have been giving the Dauntless a thorough going over, but somehow miss the GIANT SWITCH on the bridge that brings down the hologram disguise. Arturis also gives this soliloquy that frankly screams “For your consideration…“. And yes, it is 7 and the Captain at the centre of the action. That aside though, the story does manage to dovetail two of the major themes of the season: 7’s integration into the crew and the message from Starfleet. A long way to go, but this story gives me hope Voyager might not suck all the rest of the way home!
What have we learned this season? Well, like S2 where every other episode had the sodding Kazon and/or Tacotray, this season has firmly been 7 of 9’s. While, yes she IS more interesting a character than Kes…so too was Porthos. She’s also rapidly in danger of becoming Voyager’s Wesley Crusher. Unstoppable alien race? 7 of 9’s nanoprobes to the rescue! Got an environment no one else can take? 7 of 9 rides to the rescue! Need to explore the human condition, why it’s a 7 of 9 episode. On and on and on. I get that she’s shacked up with the showrunner, but for the love of Q, next season can we have some of the other crew get more of a time in the spotlight? Harry Kim especially, but Torres and Tuvok, and to a lesser degree Neelix, have been especially poorly served and squeezed out of any narrative development in season 4. Honestly, I’m struggling to remember anything Torres did of value, other than shag Tom, and she’s a great character – worthy of so much more. Gah. Well, maybe the lessons will be learned as we shift into S5. But, unlike dupli-Harry on that Class-Y world, I’m not holding my breath.
1*: The first message is for Tacotray, and is surprisingly not a warrant for his arrest but a note to say “Hey there, DS9 plot’s wiped out all the Marqui. Soz, okay, byeee”
2*: One thing I won’t hold out hope for, is an explanation as to how antimatter injectors can possibly be “opened to 120%“. Science be praised! Perhaps, the answer is simply that Janeway is a big fan of Nigel Tufnel?
3*: Hang on! Is Voyager swiping plotlines from the future of Enterprise now? Zero Hour Alien Nazi’s ahoy!
4*: Were the show runners trying to showcase Jeri Ryan’s singing talents to get her a record deal? Because the singing is…very prominent in the episode, more so than the narrative required.
5*: Spoiler alert, by the next episode the Voyager is immaculate…almost as if this storyline never happened!
6*: Of course, were the captain aboard a starship incapacitated or dead when the Omega alarm goes off – does that mean the entire ship becomes locked in space and unable to go anywhere? The more I think about this alert, the dumber it seems!
