Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

No, this was a line from Seven on the cube. She quoted Voyager's torpedo compliment, and when Janeway expressed surprise at her ability to do so, she simply said "We are Borg."

Agreed. I'd put "Year of Hell" at Voyager's apex if it wasn't for the Tantalus plot.

It was in the absolutely awful Season Six. The episode wins points with me for resurrecting the Vidiians, but other than that, it's just awful.

Knowing Voyager, I'm sure you'll find out shortly!

U! P! N! UPN!

Nemesis
Scene: Brannon Braga's office. Posters with scantily clad women washing cars are pinned to the wall, and a bookshelf is filled with TNG scripts. The bookshelf is labeled "Voyager Story Ideas." Additionally, the 'lesbian kiss' poster is proudly displayed directly behind Braga's desk. A box of condoms is spilled across the floor in one corner. Brannon Braga and Robert Beltran are present.

Braga: Hey Bobby, I'm glad you came. Big news, Bobby!

Beltran: It's, uh, Robert. Are you confusing me with Robby McNeil?

Braga: Loosen up, man! Anyway, I just got back from banging Seven of Ni-

Beltran: Jeri Ryan?

Braga: Yeah, I guess that's her name. Anyway, she has to go get her tits polished or something in, fuck, I don't know, Florida or something, so it looks like a space has opened up for a Chuckles episode.

Beltran: That's...that's good, Brannon. What's the plan?

Braga: Fuck man, it's going to be fucking awesome. You're going to fucking love it. So, the episode opens with Chuckles crashing a shuttle in a jungle.

Beltran: Uh, Brannon, haven't you already crashed two shuttles this season?

Braga: Who fucking cares, they have a shuttlecraft replicator or something. Anyway, you meet up with this team of jungle commandos, but here's the thing, they're like fucking walking thesauruses or something.

Beltran: Pardon?

Braga: They use words like 'glimpse' instead of 'look' and shit. Or, like, instead of 'enemy', they use 'nemesis.' Fuck, that's awesome, that'll be the title for this episode.

Beltran: You mean you haven't written it?

Braga: Fuck no, man, we're writing it right now! Anyway, Chuckles wants to go back to his shuttle, so the aliens send one of the platoon with him, but the guy gets shot up! And so Chuckles gets a gun! I'm talking a real gun! Like, bang-bang, motherfuckers. And of course he's gonna be all whiny with some "We don't use violence to solve our problems" bullshit, but he's conscripted anyway into the platoon.

Beltran: He, uh, Chakotay was a member of the Maquis. Remember them? The ones that killed Cardassians all the time?

Braga: Oh, that's a good point. So these aliens will be fighting these nemeses and they're like fucking freedom fighters or something. Anyway, they go to meet up with a platoon that has some comm equipment so that he can call Voyager, but they've all been slaughtered! The nemesis stake them to the ground and let them cook in the jungle heat until they die. Fuck yeah, that's fucking awesome. Isn't that fucking awesome, Bobby?

Beltran: Yeah, it's, uh, awesome.

Braga: Yeah, fucking awesome. Anyway, they get pinned down and the entire platoon is slaughtered. Chuckles runs away and ends up in an alien village where they tend to him. An old guy lets him know what's going on, and there's like this 12-year-old that gets a crush on him, and you can tell Chuckles is totally gonna hit that.

Beltran: WHAT?

Braga: Fuck man, you're always bitching that Chuckles is like fucking Geordi or something, so I try to get you some alien poontang and you're all high-and-mighty. Fine, she'll just be crushing on him and you'll be a jerk and not reciprocate, fine?

Beltran: She's twelve!

Braga: Yeah, so? In the future, the age of consent will totally be like, ten or something.

Beltran: Moving on...

Braga: Yeah, so, he goes off into the jungle, but then some bitchin' alien jets fly overhead, and he goes back to the camp, and they've all been captured by the nemeses. And here's where it gets fucking awesome.

Beltran: I thought it already was awesome.

Braga: Not compared to this. Last night, Rick and I got totally smashed on wine coolers and -

Beltran: That's funny, last night, I got totally smashed on vodka and wondered if jumping off my balcony would definitely kill me.

Braga: You kidding? Man, you don't live in a penthouse like mine. You'd get a broken leg or something, man, and fuck, we don't need that shit on the show. Anyway, last night, Rick and I broke into the 20th Century backlot and stole the Predator makeup molds. You're totally going to be fighting Predators, man.

Beltran: Won't Fox have a problem with that?

Braga: What are they gonna do, make fun of us on the Simpsons or something? Anyway, they're going all Nazi and shit and leading the old ones off to be killed, and the little girl fights them and gets taken away too, so you flip shit and beat the shit out of one of them. And then one of your platoon shows up and you start fighting them! You're killing them! You're killing the fuck out of them!

Beltran: Uhh...what about Voyager?

Braga: Oh, I totally forgot about those assholes. They beam up representatives of the planet's government, and they're the fucking Predators! It turns out that, uh, the other aliens had brainwashed Chuckles into fighting with them against the, uh, peace-loving Predators, yeah.

Beltran: What.

Braga: Yeah, and then Tuvok beams down and finds him, and Chuckles thinks he's a Predator, but then he realizes that it's just Tuvok and they beam up to the ship. The lead Predator guy apologizes to him, but Chuckles just storms out. Janeway goes to be a cocktease and asks him what's up.

Beltran: I don't think Kate would like you referring to her character as a 'cocktease.'

Braga: Yeah, you can blame the Jeri I'm not fucking for that one. Anyway, you say something like, fuck...oh, I know. "I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it was to start." OH FUCK. And remember that commercial from when I was like seven or something where the indian cries a tear because someone fucking litters on a highway or some bullshit like that? Chuckles can totally cry an indian tear too. Oh man, that'll be fucking sweet.

Beltran: I'm not going to do that.

Braga: Whatever man, this is going to be fucking awesome.

The phone rings

Braga: Yo, 'sup Rick-dawg? Yeah, they were totally real. I told you, man. You're buying the next round of coolers, G. Oh, yeah, and I want to do this episode called "Nemesis" next. What, you mean fucking Piller's next on the schedule? I fucking hate that prick. Listen, we'll just tell him we're going to do whatever trash he's written, and we'll slap his name on Nemesis - I've already got enough kickass screen credits. Yeah, rewrites, yeah. El-Aurian refugees? Eh, it'll just be an extensive rewrite. Hah hah, the sucker'll totally buy it too. Anyway, peace dawg.

Beltran: I'm, uh, gonna go Brannon. The liquor store closes soon.

Braga: Sweet man. This episode's gonna be kickass, Bobby!

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 8
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

LOL!

You're definitely a far better writer than I am!

My TNG reviews aren't nearly as entertaining as your VOY reviews.

I've also noticed that you tend to recap the entire episode, whereas I am too lazy to do that. I just assume that everyone knows what episode I am talking about and get straight into the commentary.

Great reviews! At one time I was actually considering watching all of VOY again, but reading your reviews has saved me from that painful experience!

A fair assumption - there are only a few episodes of TNG that I never saw. Of course, Voyager hemorrhaged viewers, so chances are pretty good that people aren't going to remember all but the rare good episode and the absolute train wrecks like Threshold or Distant Origin.

I actually liked Nemesis, but I thought it could have been much better. Maybe if the conflict Chakotay found himself caught in had actually been real, and he decided to screw the Prime Directive and teach them how to fight dirty like the Maquis. That could have been interesting. Maybe take Paris along for the ride.

Threshhold was worse.

Spirit Folk was awesome.

That's where Harry almost kisses a cow, right?






Awesome.

THAT LAST REVIEW WAS AWESOME!

Definitely not. Spirit Folk makes Threshold look brilliant in comparison. The Cynic had the right take on this:

Having the holographic safeties malfunction because holographic bullets tear up the place and destroy the holodeck computer is easily the stupidest moment in television history.

"Pointing out another excellent point - why the fuck didn't Janeway just send Tuvok out in a shuttle (they've got warp engines, you know) to pick them up while they spent some time figuring out a way to get their shit back from the space bums? Of course, this is a typical Trek complaint, not something Voyager-specific."

Maybe the writers were afraid people would notice that Voyager was losing too many shuttles and start to question their writing of the show.

Oh....wait a minute.....

Nevermind.....

Revulsion
An alien gentleman slowly slides down a wall to the floor, leaving a not-healthy amount of blood smeared down the bulkhead. A silver-skinned man then drags him away, then gets on the horn for help. He identifies himself as an isomorphic projection, and requests assistance from any nearby vessels.

And it just so happens that Voyager is wandering by. The senior staff is enjoying the Roast of Tuvok that is a prerequisite to his promotion to Lieutenant Commander, and Tom and Harry relate a practical 'joke' that basically had the computer reply to all of Tuvok's commands as "Live long and prosper." Wow, original.

Anyway, they get called up to the ship by some random ensign, who suggests that the Doctor might want to be present as well. Janeway and the Doctor view the distress call, and the Doctor insists on going to help the hologram in need. Janeway's hesitant to let him leave the ship due to potential damage to his mobile emitter, but she eventually relents, assigning Torres to accompany him to help repair the hologram and his mobile emitter if damaged.

Meanwhile, Harry and Seven are teamed up to start work on a new Astrometrics Lab (interestingly, this is another mini-arc that culminates in Year of Hell). Harry's a little concerned about this because she beat the shit out of him in The Gift to try to contact the Borg, but he gets over it, because everyone beats the shit out of him.

The Doctor and Torres take a shuttle over to the hologram's ship, all the while the Doctor making nervous quips about medicine and Torres' relationship with Tom. Basically, the show's acting like he's never left the ship before, but this isn't true - he left it, notably, in Macrocosm and Darkling. Anyway, they get over there, and get to work trying to repair the ship's systems. The hologram appears behind them and starts stalking up to them with a hammer, but as soon as they hear him, he drops it, then reappears elsewhere, greeting them humbly.

After expressing disappointment that only the Doctor was holographic, he relates the tale of how a couple of the crew members brought aboard a virus that ended up infecting and killing the rest of the crew. When Torres stabilizes his program, but needs access to his full controls in order to fully complete repairs, he tells her that the deck is flooded with a toxin, but that there is an alternate interface she can use. They happily cavort on over to it and get to work.

Back on Voyager, Harry and Seven bond over maintenance work in a Jeffries Tube. Yawn.

On the hologram's ship, the Doctor tells him of how he used to be regarded as a tool, much the same way the hologram was, but how now he's considered to be one of the crew. Again, I don't buy this for a second - Janeway was ready to execute him as a failsafe if the Borg didn't play nice. Of course, she's also insane, so that might explain it. Anyway, the hologram isn't sure that he can expand his program the way the Doctor has, but the Doctor insists that he'll be able to.

The hologram then takes some food to Torres. Frankly, I wouldn't eat anything on a ship whose crew was killed by some virus, but Torres nips away. He comments that she eats just like a little fish, but soon goes off on a rant about 'organics' and how they ruin and pollute everything they touch. This scene would have worked, had I not seen it before - it played out almost exactly like the scene between Marion Crane and Norman Bates in the office of the Bates Motel. The bit about the fish could be replaced with 'bird' and it'd be almost identical.

And, just like in Psycho, after his crazy-time, he apologizes profusely. Torres goes off and mentions it to the Doctor, who dismisses it as a combination of being alone on a ship for a couple months with the genuine dislike his organic superiors treated him with. However, Torres counters with the revelation that she's run a scan of the lower deck, and found that it's free of any toxin. She asks the Doctor to keep the hologram busy while she investigates.

And on Voyager, Seven and Harry work to remove a Borg information node from the alcoves, but end up cutting Seven's hand in the process. He nursemaids her to sickbay, where Tom comments on how she very nearly caught a nerve that would require surgery, fires the good ol' dermal regenerator across her palm, and sends her on her way. Harry tells her that he'll catch up, then lambastes Tom for his lack of sensitivity and poor bedside manner. And because Harry is an open book, Tom immediately recognizes that Harry's got a crush on Seven. As someone who is actually successful with women, Tom advises Harry to STAY THE FUCK AWAY. Harry ignores his advice, though.

As the Doctor keeps the hologram busy, Torres explores the lower deck and finds the controls to his holomatrix. While working, a body slides down in a glass compartment in the room. Horrified, she realizes the truth. A virus didn't kill the crew. The hologram did. And as soon as she starts the process to shut him down, the hologram tells the Doctor that Torres must be dealt with, and transfers down there. The Doctor hurries there on foot, but it's too late - in the control room, the hologram has pushed his matrix into Torres' chest and has started to squeeze her heart. She manages to turn him off at the last second, and the Doctor finds her and starts administering care, but they need to get back to Voyager.

Back on Voyager, Harry calls Seven to the mess hall in the middle of the night to discuss an inspiration he had about the Astrometrics Lab. However, his mind is really elsewhere. To quote Memory Alpha, "Kim begins to lay moves on her." God, you can just tell that these guys have never touched a girl. He suggests a romantic holodeck excursion, but Seven prefers to cut to the chase, instructing him to take off his clothes if he would like to copulate.

So, here's Harry - the closest he's ever gotten to some action in the last three and a half years has been with some alien women that basically wanted to swallow his soul - and he chickens out, running out of the room. Way to go, Harry, now Chuckles is going to Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before in S7.

Anyway, the Doctor revives Torres, but is unable to beam back to the ship. Torres is unable to as well, but notices a holographic fish that the hologram kept as a pet is still running - his program isn't so inactive after all. And just like that, the hologram knocks Torres unconscious, and tries to hit the Doctor with the hammer. Naturally, it doesn't work, but he swings again, and nicks the Doctor's holoemitter. He sputters out of existence, and the hologram takes it, realizing that it's his key to freedom from the confines of the ship - the way to attain perfection, to his mind. Torres, on the other hand, wakes up, and tries to deactivate him, but he simply advances through the walls, getting closer and closer. She then grabs an energy conduit and rams the exposed end into the hologram. The feedback destabilizing his program, he is permanently offline. Torres repairs the Doctor's emitter, reactivates him, and beams them both back to the shuttle.

And on Voyager, Harry checks in with Chakotay with progress on the Astrometrics Lab. But there's something else that Chakotay wants to discuss. It's obvious he knows exactly what Harry tried to pull, despite the innocuous manner in which Seven phrased her report, and basically wrings the information out of Harry. Frankly, Chuckles' obsession with the private lives of his crew is fucking creepy.

Anyway, in Sickbay, the Doctor and Torres check in with Tom, who is happy to see her. The Doctor, on the other hand, is not, and starts in on the state in which Tom has kept sickbay, using language and mannerisms increasingly similar to those of the hologram Torres just permanently checked out of the SVN repository. He then smiles, obviously joking.

Overall, this wasn't necessarily a bad concept for an episode. But it's got so many issues that they are impossible to ignore. It blatantly cribs off of Psycho (in more than the scene I mentioned, by the way), but without any of the charm - you never like, or feel sorry for, the hologram, so it just doesn't work. Why don't you? Because the episode gives it away in the teaser that he's the killer, and with little shots of him cleaning up unnoticed blood throughout the episode, it becomes even more clear if, somehow, there was any doubt left. The B-plot between Harry and Seven is relatively innocuous, and actually wins points for me due to the implied way that most Trek fans would act around women who don't quite end up fitting into the fantasies they've created around them.

And it certainly wasn't a shining moment for the Doctor, either - he's advanced beyond being a naive simulacrum of a physician.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 8
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

I read it. Meh. Just an excuse to get Kirk and some dinosuars together.

Actually, this was around the point where the Doctor started to annoy the fuck outta me.

The Raven
Janeway's had a long day, and she hasn't had any really good, quality Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants time since Kes turned into a beam of light and stole a shuttle. So she's dragged Seven of Nine off to the holodeck to sculpt clay with her. What Janeway doesn't seem to fucking get is that, hey, just because you both have two X-chromosomes doesn't mean you all like to go off to holodeck fantasy dreamland where you fuck hunky Irish guys and chase Leonardo da Vinci all over the Italian countryside. Seven finds the activity to be fucking boring, though she states it in terms of efficiency this and Collective that.

Seven ignores Janeway as she's lumping more clay onto a godawful bust that looks like one of the art projects featured on Captain Picard Day on the Enterprise, when she comes across da Vinci's flying machine. This causes her to suddenly have a vision of a raven chasing her down an assimilated corridor.

Now, Janeway isn't going to let Chakotay co-opt this episode simply because there's some visions with animals and shit, so she rushes Seven off to sickbay. Janeway, featuring her Armchair Psychology degree, suggests that maybe the vision was due to the traumatic experience of Borghood, but Seven disagrees, stating that they raised her and there was never any ill will that she could recall. The Doctor knows to stay out of it, and sends her on her way with a PADD full of nutritional information. Yes, he banishes her to the Mess Hall. Easily the most dick move the Doctor ever pulled.

Up on the bridge, Janeway and Chuckles deal with an alien race called the B'omar. Voyager just wants to cut through their space, but the representatives the B'omar have sent over have plotted a more...circuitous route that everyone objects to, including Tom, forgetting that he isn't staring up at the viewscreen. Amusingly, I look at these guys and imagine that they're basically how every other race views the Federation - a bunch of paper-pushing jerks who are more concerned with their bureaucracy than actually helping those in need.

In the Mess Hall, Neelix whips up something that is bound to be awful (and, amusingly, says that steamed whatever-it-is would be easier on her stomach than stir-fried whatever-it-is, then proceeds to stir-fry it - I guess the Doctor isn't the only dick in this episode). He tries to be friendly, but after eating a few bites, some new Borg technology sprouts out of the back of her hand. She soon goes back to the default "You will be assimilated" sort of behavior for a Borg.

On the bridge, the negotiations are going poorly, when word makes it upstairs that Seven's beating feet off the ship. All the security measures fail, and she shoots two security officers nearly point-blank with a phaser rifle. Ignoring the range of the shot, the fact that they fell out-of-frame is a pretty strong indication that she just murdered them. She swipes a shuttle and phasers her way out of the shuttlebay, zooming off into B'omar space.

The B'omar look at Janeway like she is fucking insane (which she is) for having a Borg aboard, and this only cements their notion that Voyager is a ship full of idiots who have no idea what they're doing. They tell Voyager that any attempt to enter their space will be met with swift retaliation.

Janeway and Chakotay shuffle on down to Sickbay, where the Doctor reveals that in a site-to-site transport that Seven pulled off during her escape, a bunch of her Borg technology has reasserted itself. He has also come up with a deus ex machina hypospray that should help bring Seven under control, so long as someone can shoot her up with it. Janeway takes it up to the bridge and hands it off to Tuvok and Tom, who have worked out a plan to sneak through the B'omar's defenses and go capture Seven.

So, they run off to do that and beam Tuvok to Seven's shuttle, where she promptly Vulcan Neck Pinches him, an ironic turn of events. Tom follows, but eventually Seven comes to a small moon. When Tuvok comes to, she tells him that a Borg beacon has lead her here - a failsafe provided by the collective to help lead wayward Borg back to the Collective. She expresses apprehension about beaming down to the Borg, but Tuvok believes that no Borg are present - certainly the B'omar would know about Borg in their own space. Nonetheless, he volunteers to go with her as she beams down to the wreckage of a small Federation ship.

They start exploring the wreckage, and discover that it had been assimilated at some point in the past. As they make their way closer and closer to the bridge, where the beacon is transmitting from, Janeway and Harry are going over Seven's personal logs. They discuss how her visions include a large black bird constantly attacking her. Janeway has an inspiration - she knows what the ship is, and she orders Voyager into B'omar space because she is batshit crazy.

On the bridge of the wrecked ship, Tuvok and Seven encounter the abandoned beacon. And Seven realizes why she was really drawn here - this was where she was assimilated. As she dusts off the dedication plaque, it reveals the name of the ship - the Raven. Her mother and father were assimilated here. As she encounters visions of them telling a younger version of herself to run away, the B'omar start attacking the downed vessel. Seven and Tuvok escape just in time to have Paris beam them out and chase after Voyager, which is flying by. As soon as Tom's aboard, they hit maximum warp and clear B'omar space as soon as they can.

In the recap, Seven decides that, maybe after all of this, she would like to unwind on the holodeck. Great, way to join the Sisterhood, Seven.

Overall, this wasn't a bad episode, and I kind of enjoy it simply because it establishes the Raven backstory that comes up later - one that's easily a cautionary tale about the dangers of science and exploration clouding one's objectivity (and one that provided a sort of rewrite to the Borg first-contact mythos - one that provides a reason for the Borg to have been scooping up settlements in the Alpha Quadrant before having ever met humanity). And so it earns marks on a storytelling level, the guest cast doing remarkably well even with coat hangers on their heads, and Jeri Ryan playing it straight - I don't think she's necessarily a bad actress, I think she was just handed a lot of crap over the years on Voyager.

Oh, and way to abandon a shuttle in B'omar space, guys. I guess all that 'technology falling into the wrong hands' nonsense only applies when Ocampans are aboard or something.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 9
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

I thought this was one of VOY's best. It's basically a re-telling of Gallileo and his fight for truth against the Catholic Church. I really don't see how a sci-fi fan can not appreciate it.

JMHO.

How many times will you hear me say this? RickDeckard is absolutely right.

Tuvok and Neelix ceased to exist when the transporter accident happened. That the matter comprising their bodies was reconstituted into someone else does not make that any less true. All of us incorporate matter that was formerly in the bodies of others; would we respect a claim on that matter in order to reconstitute the dead?

Tuvix was an independent, self-aware being with a unique existence. That he was a composite of Tuvok and Neelix is irrelevent. He had a right to live. Janeway, as a human being, as a civilized person, as an upholder of Federation values, had a duty to support that right. She didn't.

Janeway got her two crewmates back, yes. But she killed an innocent person in order to do it.

If you insist that Tuvix live, duplicate him in the transporter and then seperate one of the duplicates into Tuvok and Neelix. What the hell? The fucking transporter is evidently magic anyway.

That's true. The transporter seems to be able to stamp out copies of Kirk and Riker. Not to mention make people younger (but where did their mass go?).

I appreciate what they attempted to do. The concept is actually really interesting. The allegory could have been pretty compelling too.

But instead, they were about as subtle as a brick to the face. The episode had this undeniable stench of superiority, essentially making the Voth officials into classic straw men.

The reason I think the episode didn't work is that we, as the audience, were convinced of the Voth's lineage practically fifteen minutes into the episode. Instead of viewing the story of Galileo and the Catholic Church as those experiencing it would have, we instead see it, well, as we do now - looking back at history with a sort of quaint nostalgia.

A far better episode would have been almost entirely focused on the Voth scientist interacting in his society, the overwhelming ostracization he'd face even among his peers, rare allies that help him track down these 'humans' that are traipsing across the quadrant. Instead, we get the rough equivalent of a musical montage and a bunch of sanctimonious preaching that ignores the real conflict of the tale. In the end, it wasn't about Galileo and the Catholic Church. It was about a world on the brink of falling into an entirely new understanding of how the universe fundamentally works. It was about the push back from the edge of the precipice - the fall itself was inevitable. And we didn't get to see any of that.

The one thing I will give Distant Origin is that it had the balls to have an unhappy ending. That's rare in Star Trek as a whole, let alone Voyager.

Good concept, terrible execution. Episodes like Distant Origin are one of the tragedies of Voyager, in my opinion - there were a lot of episodes that could have been great had the writing been at all focused.

Scientific Method
Torres is trudging through a Jeffries Tube, and eventually runs across Seven of Nine. She then scolds Seven for performing maintenance on the ship's power relays without her permission. Seven apologizes, stating that she was unaccustomed to not simply solving a problem immediately when it became apparent. Torres undoes whatever Seven did, then crawls out of the Jeffries Tube.

In Sickbay, Tom rushes into the Doctor's office and asks him if it's OK if he leaves early, since he has to finish the comm report. The Doctor knows he is lying, but doesn't seem to care, and lets him go. So where does he go? Off to Engineering where he makes out with Torres in a closet. Fuck, what next, do they spin the bottle and have Vorik and Seven go in the closet next for Seven^2 Minutes of Heaven? While they're kissing, we suddenly get an x-ray shot of the pair making out, their tongues sloshing around in each other's skull cavities. Who said Voyager wasn't groundbreaking?

We now see something that no one should ever have to see. I hope you guys appreciate this, because this is the shit of nightmares - having Janeway's face contort in a mixture of pain and pleasure as she receives a massage from the Doctor. The Doctor is giving her a hard time, suggesting her constant headache is a symptom of stress, nothing more. How this could be, I don't know, because she spends an absurd amount of time fucking around with clay while Leonardo da Vinci runs around like a chicken with his head cut off.

Chuckles calls her and asks her to come up to the bridge to look at the binary pulsars Voyager found, so she does so eagerly to get away from the Doctor's nagging. Her headache persists, and Chakotay notices it. Now, this is a supposedly persistent headache that has been plaguing Janeway for a while now, and Chakotay just now notices? Here's a hint, Chuckles - if you want to get any play, you have to actually pay attention to the object of your affection, not spend all your time vicariously enjoying the sex lives of other crew members by forcing them to tell you about them.

Tom and Torres meet up again in Engineering and start making out on the upstairs console. In terms of public displays of affection, Tom's going to be bending her over the flight console on the Bridge in a couple days. Tuvok walks in on them, and they are understandably embarassed, but Tuvok is unfazed. They then all meet up for the relatively routine staff meeting, but Janeway asks Tom and Torres to stay back. She them tears them a new one for not being more discreet with their relationship, a lecture obviously prompted more by the headache than the problem at hand.

And then Chakotay's in his quarters and he notices all his hair falling out. It's OK, Chuckles, both Picard and Sisko were bigger players than you, and they definitely rocked the bald look. By the time he makes it to Sickbay, though, he's aged a few decades. Neelix is brought in by Harry and Seven shortly thereafter, with dark spots and no whiskers. According to the Doctor, their DNA has been 'hyperstimulated', whatever the fuck that means, and that apparently makes Chuckles get old and Neelix take on more of the traits of his great grandfather. Go go Magic DNA!

The Doctor and Torres investigate their DNA, and discover that it's been tagged with some sort of incredibly tiny alien RFID chip. The thing looks like a barcode, though, and the scene is almost hilarious in the lengths they go to not say a distinctly-20th-century word like barcode. "Look at it." "It's like nothing I've ever seen." "It almost looks like a...well, I can't be sure what it looks like." That sort of stuff. As they discover this, though, the Doctor's program starts to be deleted out of his holoemitter. Torres is suddenly struck unconscious, and the Doctor barely manages to let Tom know before transferring himself into the ship's hologrid.

Basically the entire senior staff's chilling in Sickbay - Torres' body suddenly could no longer process oxygen. Tom's got her stabilized, and as they discuss how to continue without the Doctor, Seven starts hearing a voice in her head. Specifically, the Doctor's voice. He's tied into her Borg tech and requests that she comes to the holodeck. She awkwardly excuses herself and does so. The Doctor's disguised himself in the da Vinci simulation, and he and Seven discuss what they need to do. The Doctor modifies Seven's ocular implant to the frequency the RFID tags are transmitting on, and sends her on her way.

While wandering around the ship, Seven encounters many unidentified aliens clearly interacting with the crew, who all seem to have one sort of strange implement or another attached to themselves. One of the aliens even puts some sort of implant into Seven, apparently unaware that she can see them. Seven calls up the Doctor and tells him what's going on, and he tells her that she has to tell the captain. One problem though - when she does so, the Captain has two constant minders that are busy tweaking the giant needles sticking into her head. That explains the headaches.

Janeway, meanwhile, is bitching to Tuvok and basically says that she's tired of the lax discipline on the ship. She basically wants him to crack down hard on any and all improprieties. With a hint of Vulcan humor, he asks her if she would like him to flog them as well. She realizes that she's more insane than usual, and apologizes. Not really important to the plot, but it was a funny scene nonetheless.

Seven comes up with a plan to essentially overload the alien devices with a massive energy burst distributed across the ship. However, when implementing this, she draws the attention of both the aliens and Tuvok. As Tuvok threatens to phaser her if she doesn't discontinue her modifications to the power grid, she instead grabs a phaser and shoots one of the aliens, bringing her into phase with Voyager.

Janeway interrogates her, and discovers that the aliens have been performing a giant medical experiment on the crew, all to hopefully prolong and better the lives of their own people. The alien even offers to share the research after they are done, promising only a 'minimum' of casualties. Janeway's pissed off, but there isn't a lot she can do - any attempts to fight back against them will result in the aliens simply upping the pain dosage. The alien even tells Janeway that they've been seeing just how much pain she can tolerate.

While on the bridge, trying to figure out what to do next, a yellow shirt goes into catatonic shock and dies. The Doctor tries to revive her, but the efforts are in vain. Janeway is now incensed, and decides that the aliens will be leaving the ship, one way or another. She takes the helm and steers the ship between the fucking pulsars. Now, the ship technically can't handle this, and the aliens know this. They beg her to stop, but she simply spits back at them that this is what happens when humans are pushed to their limits. Seeing that Janeway is completely fucking insane, they evacuate the ship - two of their ships phase into normal space-time, and one is destroyed from the gravitational forces from the pulsars. Janeway punches it into Warp, and the ship manages to fly straight through and break out of the gravitational pull just in time.

And then I guess the Doctor fixes everyone? The episode doesn't actually show this, amusingly enough.

Overall, I rather liked this episode, even if I gave it a hard time. It was novel, it made a good use of pretty much the entire cast, it had some light moments (like Chakotay and Neelix one-upping each other on their newfound disabilities, which surprisingly worked), the anomaly of the week actually saved the ship for a change, and it was well-paced, well-shot, and well-constructed overall.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: 13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 9
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

Atleast Janeway was a Captain who played to her strengths.

All things considered, I do have to give her credit for that. Considering the odds against Voyager ever reaching Earth, it'd take an insane captain not to give up hope without pulling a Ransom. Janeway had the right kind of mental illness for the task at hand.

The kind of insanity where she endangers the lives of her crew because she doesn't want to hit the reset button on her holographic dildo?

Janeway, as written, was in no good or useful way nuts. She wasn't even written as a character at all, which is the problem. She was written to be whatever kind of nuts was needed to push along the story of the week, without regard for characterization or whether such insanity was suitable for the captain of a ship lost in space.

By that time, the entire crew had become attached to that stupid fake town. It wasn't the decision any other captain would have even had to make, but Voyager was in a position where maintaining morale was nearly as vital as life support or shields.



And let's not forget DS9s senior staff spending days plotting a casino heist to help their holographic buddy get his job back... in the middle of a war. Y'know, when they weren't too busy putting together a baseball team to stick it to some Vulcans.

You're kidding, right? The idea that that simulation did anything for morale was at least as ridiculous as Janeway's decision. At the point that that simulation is necessary, or even useful, for morale your duty as a captain is to space the crew and start over. Even the Voyager writers realized that, hence the decision never to revisit Fair Haven after Spirit Folk.

Not even a little bit comparable. Crew members weren't about to die because of the decision on DS9 and, while taking time for leisure in the midst of an actual battle is problematic, it's highly recommended to do so from time to time during war.

They just might, if the strategic operations officer for the sector is planning a wacky caper instead of studying the latest intelligence reports.

I think the larger issue with holodecks is that they only really made sense as a dramatic device on TNG and, at most, the first couple years of DS9. With TNG, you really got the sense that the Enterprise spent a hell of a lot of time just getting from Point A to Point B, so naturally, the holodeck would be a welcome pass-time.

And so, for the first couple of years of DS9, that made sense too. But after that, they're busy fighting, well, basically everybody, so you might be looking forward to some holodeck time during your scant few off hours, but only Quark had any holosuites on the station - it was something like four to service 5,000 people, probably a third of which were off at any given time. Good luck getting that time in, let alone somehow magically acquiring latinum to pay Quark with when everyone in Starfleet goes unpaid.

And on Voyager, the holodeck would just chew up power and computational resources - nobody should have been running the damn thing, and they should have been converting them into traditional recreation areas and gyms.

In other words, they became a crutch for the writers. In the original series, if they wanted Kirk to play baseball, they would have had him run across some Earth clone that was ruled by baseball players or some nonsense like that. On TNG, if they wanted Riker to play baseball, he'd wander down to the holodeck and you'd see that for a scene or something. On DS9, well, you get an entire episode devoted to it, with a racial history lesson tossed in. On VOY, the holodeck would have malfunctioned when sentient stellar dust is pulled into the Bussard Collectors, harmonizing an anti-interferometric pulse along the ODN conduits, overloading the holodeck circuits, and somehow transferring the sentience into the holodeck characters, who have transmogrified into forehead aliens with kitchen utensils sticking out of their hair who are now holding some wacky pair of characters (like Tuvok/Neelix, or Torres/The Doctor) hostage because if Voyager ends the program, it'll cause a reverse resonance pulse that will end up hyper-charging the sentient stellar dust, causing them to infect the rest of their 'people' with Borg nanoprobes from an experiment Seven of Nine was running in the science lab.

Year of Hell, Part I
On a idyllic world, vaguely reminiscent of earth, people are happily walking around a matte painting and zipping along on a CG monorail. But then, a giant ship appears in the sky. A bright beam of light focuses through a crystal mounted at the tip, and as it hits the surface, the buildings, people, all evidence of the civilization, vanishes.

An officer aboard the ship reports to his superior that the entire history of the Zahl' presence on the planet has been eliminated. But it does not seem to have achieved the effect the commander of the vessel was hoping for, and he orders a total elimination of the Zahl homeworld. Essentially, genocide.

On Voyager, though, it's a happier occasion, as Harry and Seven show off the new astrometrics lab (and really, it's a pretty nice set), and demonstrate how using it calculated a new route that should shave five years off their journey home. The Doctor tries to give a speech to commemorate the occasion, but his long-winded talk is cut short when the senior staff is called to the bridge.

A small ship is attacking Voyager, but causing no actual damage. They hail, and Janeway is apparently amused to meet the Krenim - hardly the deadly race Kes would have described, but as a bunch of whiners who have no actual power whatsoever. She takes the wind out of his sails with a statement that the size of what's in his torpedo tubes isn't big enough, and that he should run along. Yes, we needed sexual innuendo from Janeway, who we saw just last episode in that massage scene.

Just to let you all know, I had a dream last night featuring Voyager. For some reason, a hillbilly's consciousness had been downloaded into Seven's brain, and hillbilly-Seven and Janeway were discussing how they lost their virginity. Hillbilly-Seven even noted how loose she became after having a half-dozen kids. I hope you all appreciate the trauma I am putting myself through to deliver these reviews to you.

Anyway, Janeway meets up with a Zahl representative, and he seems like a pretty affable guy. He apologizes for the Krenim, and gladly offers any assistance that Voyager will need to get home just a little bit sooner. However, the Krenim ship starts 'attacking' again, and they all go to talk with the Krenim captain. However, Harry picks up a shockwave rapidly approaching. Tom says that he can't outrun it. As the shockwave washes over the Krenim ship, it grows much larger, becoming far more menacing, and as it hits Voyager, damage appears on the bridge and the Zahl representative disappears. This was the Krenim that Kes had warned them about. The Krenim captain demands Janeway's surrender, but she refuses, and sits down, commenting that it was turning into the week of hell.

The Krenim ship's torpedoes fly straight through Voyager's shields, and Tuvok has a solution at the ready - they're chronoton-based, so they are slightly out of temporal synch with Voyager. Tom manages to punch the ship to warp, but not after significant damage and casualties.

We then check in with the Krenim warship again. After the erasure of the Zahl from history, the commander, named Annorax, is initially happy to hear that a 98% restoration of the timeline has restored the Krenim to their former glory, but is dismayed to hear that a colony, Kiana Prime, was not restored. He looks forlornly at a lock of hair encased in a MYSTICAL GLASS PYRAMID, and orders new calculations. His lieutenant protests, but he pushes the order through anyway.

A couple weeks later, Voyager is still being attacked by the Krenim. With weapons offline, Janeway decides to lay down four torpedoes like mines to destroy their ship. Just as she gives the order, though, another chroniton torpedo slams into Voyager. The Doctor calls up to the bridge and informs them of a major power overload on deck five. Harry is unable to stop it, so Chakotay orders the Doctor to start evacuating the deck. The mines hit their target and destroy the Krenim ship, but the price to Voyager is still grave. The Doctor has to shut the Jeffries Tube hatch on two ensigns who just weren't quite moving fast enough, and just as he does so, the power relays on the deck go critical. We get this beautiful exterior shot of the entire deck explosively decompressing into space. Voyager is in tatters, but temporarily out of danger, Janeway storms off to her ready room, and Chakotay follows her. He pitches the idea of abandoning the ship, splitting up with the escape pods and shuttles, and meeting up on the opposite side of Krenim space, but Janeway points out that there's no actual plan beyond that - what are they going to do without a ship?

A week later, Torres and Kim are trapped in a turbolift. They play a trivia game to keep Torres' mind off her broken foot, and Seven soon rescues them. As she helps them back to their stations, she mentions that the answer to one of the trivia questions, the name of humanity's first warp-capable ship, was the Phoenix, and quips that the Borg were there, but that it was a long story. A long and awesome story. We learn that Tom's been working on some bulkheads that should help keep the ship's structure together and help maintain habitability, and Tuvok has been hard at work on temporal shields. When Seven goes to repair part of the ship, though, she discovers a chronoton torpedo lodged in a Jeffries Tube. It'd look familiar to Kes, but to Seven, it's entirely new. She calls Tuvok, and they investigate it. She figures out the temporal variance so that he can complete his shields, but it starts to go critical. He shields her from the blast.

A couple weeks later, we learn he is blind, and Seven is his assistant. When the Bridge calls up and detects another shockwave, Seven rushes to deflector control and brings up the temporal shields. Tuvok activates a tactile interface (see, even without the hair beret, Geordi could have had a job in Starfleet), and prepares the shields. Annorax has eradicated another alien race from history, and the shockwave hits a Krenim ship, reducing it to a pitiful, tiny thing. Voyager, this time, is unaffected - the temporal shields protect them fully from modifications to the timeline by Annorax's ship. Annorax realizes that Voyager's thrown off his calculations, and sets an intercept course.

Janeway and Seven run a scan of space, and discover the erasure of the aliens from existence - they quickly realize the scope of the threat they face. And face it they do - the timeship soon shows up and kidnaps Tom and Chakotay. Janeway rushes to the bridge and confronts Annorax, who tells her that it's nothing personal, but Voyager must be removed from history to protect the timeline. God, if only it removed the show from existence. Anyway, he fires the weapon at the ship, and the shields hold, but are rapidly failing. Janeway orders the ship to go to warp, and activates Tom's bulkheads, as warp will cause the ship to start flying apart. We see the hull peel from Voyager as they go to warp and escape.

Janeway gives a speech to some of the crew in the mess hall - she's going with Chakotay's plan, but the senior staff will remain on Voyager to coordinate and to hopefully find Tom and Chakotay. We are left with a shot of the escape pods launching from Voyager.

This is an awesome episode, I'll straight-up say it. There are so few times in Trek that we see the shit get kicked out of the hero ship, and they pull it off utterly convincingly here. Unfortunately, we all know that it'll all be undone at the end of the next episode, but it's a fun ride while it lasts.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: 9/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 9
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7