Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Unimatrix Zero, Part II

There is so fucking much that is wrong with this episode.

People can debate at what point the pussification of the Borg began. Some might have even gone as far to say they defanged the Borg at the end of The Best of Both Worlds, Part II. Others point to the humanization of the Borg in I, Borg and Descent. Voyager is a more popular target to blame, whether it's their helplessness in Scorpion or their ineptitude in Dark Frontier. Perhaps even the introduction of the Borg Queen in First Contact is to blame.

Without a fucking shadow of a doubt, though, Unimatrix Zero, Part II represents the completion of that process. They just bend right the fuck over and take it from a strap-on wielding Janeway. And what's worse? There is one more reference to this fucking disaster throughout the remainder of the show, and it's part of a future that ceases to exist. This is all for nothing, a shameless ratings ploy at the cost of one of Star Trek's few threatening enemies, and proof positive that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had exhausted what few unique ideas they had in the first place.

We open where we left off, with Torres, Tuvok, and Janeway assimilated. Sort of. Kind of. The Doctor injected them with bullshit that meant that they'd retain their individuality through the assimilation process. You know what that means? The Borg hacked and slashed at their living, conscious bodies. The three of them made it through what has always been described as indescribable trauma, and there is nothing. It's business as fucking usual, except they've got some prosthetics on. Janeway even gets a blue laser, and that is totally fucking different than Picard's red laser, honest guys, we're not fucking robbing the corpse of TNG at all, come on, you know us better than that.

The plan, obviously, is to use their position and abilities as Borg drones to infect the Collective with the virus that will let the inhabitants of Unimatrix Zero retain their individuality after signing off. They make their way to the Central Plexus on the tactical Cube, which is, fuck, I guess the ship's mainframe? You can tell it's different because the lights are yellow instead of green. Torres and Janeway are doing fine, and are busy clomping around the place like they aren't an ungodly amalgam of man and machine, but Tuvok, Tuvok is having problems. Yes, the one with superior mental acuity. The one who has spent his entire life mastering control of his mind and body. He's the one that can't keep the fucking Collective out of his head. Why? For the story, his brief contact with the Collective alerts the Borg Queen to the fact that she can't hear any of them.

Now, the Borg have captured and assimilated two high-ranking Starfleet officers and a highly technically inclined half-Klingon. Nobody there noticed that they weren't phoning home? The Borg Queen, who had been personally monitoring the situation instead of trusting that the fucking clown college crew that makes up Voyager would be easily wiped out by a fucking tactical Cube, didn't think to check in and take a look at all the brand-new top-secret Starfleet knowledge scraped out of the skulls of Janeway and Tuvok?

What in the goddamn fuck.

Torres injects the virus into the Central Plexus while Janeway tries to keep Tuvok talking about his own history to help maintain his individuality. Ultimately, he loses that fight, though, and alerts the Borg Queen to their location in the ship. Yes, that's right, the Borg can't even figure out where three goddamn Borg drones that aren't part of the Collective are on their own fucking ship.

Voyager, who had been monitoring the life signs of the away team in a manner undetectable by the Borg, pick up on Tuvok's fall to the dark side and come to the rescue. The tactical Cube tells Voyager to fuck off, utilizes Tuvok's knowledge of the ship's command codes, and promptly punches a hole through Voyager's saucer section. Chuckles decides to get the fuck out. And the Borg Queen's had just about enough of this bullshit, and hooks Janeway up to an alcove that transmits a holographic version of herself to talk to the Queen. Conveniently, the Queen let her be in her not-Borgified state for this holographic transmission, which is tv-production-talk for "We didn't want to put Kate Mulgrew into all that makeup again for her scenes with Susannah Thompson).

The Borg Queen proceeds to call up an image of a Cube, in which she can't hear a few of the drones anymore thanks to Janeway's virus. She then destroys it. She repeats it with a sphere, and then almost a dozen more ships. Given that she quotes 64,000 drones on the Cube and 11,000 drones on the Sphere, that means that hundreds of thousands of drones died in the course of the civil war Janeway instigated. If they had just let the Borg resolve the situation themselves, it probably would have been a couple dozen at most - they figured out how to get into Unimatrix Zero with only a couple Borg down, after all. Yes, they would have still been assimilated slaves, but since NOTHING FUCKING CHANGES AT THE END OF THIS EPISODE, that means every single one of these Borg drones died in vain.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has wired Seven back up to dreamland. She tells him that she's not really interested in chatting with her internet buddies once this whole fiasco is over, and the Doctor eventually talks her into revealing her romance with her online boyfriend that totally exists and he lives in Canada and he's in a band and he's too cool for pictures, OK? While she's not into it, the Doctor points out that he must have been a pretty decent guy to be friends of any sort with Seven, and she agrees. Meanwhile, the Doctor gets all emo about it.

Seven goes in and makes up with her boyfriend, and here's the next problem with Unimatrix Zero. Supposedly, these are their untouched individual personalities. That means that, even if Annika Hansen chilled in a maturation chamber for a few years, when she dialed into Unimatrix Zero, she still had the heart and soul of a ten-year-old, that this fucking creepy bastard proceeded to fuck.

Janeway challenges the Queen to visit Unimatrix Zero for herself, taunting her with the idea that she'd be threatened by her individuality. The problem? Janeway knows that the Borg that break into Unimatrix Zero aren't individuals - she knifed a bunch of them herself. Meanwhile, Tom confronts Chuckles, who is getting very comfortable in Janeway's office, and is probably trying to figure out how easy it would be to paint "U.S.S. Enter-her-prise" on the hull, claiming that with Janeway and Tuvok off the ship, and Chuckles in command, he's first officer, and therefore Chuckles has to listen to him and his demands to go fetch the away team. However, Chuckles shuts him down with the same "I need your support" B.S. that Janeway conned him with in Part I.

The Queen takes Janeway up on her offer and heads into Unimatrix Zero, where she immediately encounters a kid, whom she convinces she is good by explaining that she only wants everyone to be friends, and assimilation lets that happen - nobody ever has to be alone. Once she returns after viewing a terrible green-screened matte painting, sheharasses Janeway via the worst FaceTime call ever, and tells her that if Unimatrix Zero isn't disconnected, she'll be releasing a virus that will nuke the neural tissue of any Borg that connects to it.

So, the Queen transmits the Janeway hologram to Voyager, where she tells them that Unimatrix Zero cannot continue. Seven interprets that as Janeway giving up, but Chuckles explains that she was very specific in her words, and he orders Seven to evacuate Unimatrix Zero. She goes to do so, and has an incredibly embarrassing, yet chaste, romance scene in which she has to break up with her internet boyfriend, especially since he's stuck on the other side of the Beta quadrant (wouldn't that put him close to Earth?). After that, some of the liberated Borg show up to help Voyager - they determine the frequency on which Unimatrix Zero operates, and start to disrupt it, ultimately destroying Unimatrix Zero to prevent anyone from being infected by the Queen's virus. Then, the liberated Borg help take on the tactical Cube (I'm sure the three torpedoes that Voyager launches in this battle helped).

Full views of Voyager's saucer do not depict any damage. They couldn't even keep damage on the ship for a full episode.

Anyway, they manage to beam the away team out, just as the Queen orders the tactical Cube to self-destruct, quite obviously angry. Do the liberated Borg stick around to help Voyager with repairs? Remain as an escort while Voyager gets the fuck out of the area? Hell, even give them a transwarp coil or two since, the last time they got their hands on one, they went 20,000 light years before burning it out? No, of course not. If they had just asked their new allies for help, they could have been home in a fucking week. Maybe they're not too worried about it, since, back in Sickbay, the Doctor makes quick work of de-Borgifying them.

And why shouldn't he? Unlike the vast majority of Borg we've seen, Janeway and company didn't lose an eye. Or an arm. Or a leg. No, the Borg conveniently left them intact, because God forbid they write a story about any of these characters dealing with those sorts of losses. And, despite everything that would have been added to them (like, say, the hole in Janeway's fucking brain that the laser fit into), they made it out completely unscathed. I think the fanwank bullshit explanation of this is that the Doctor's magical serum prevented a full assimilation, but you and I and everyone we know knows that's bullshit.

And then we never hear of the Borg civil war or Unimatrix Zero again until Endgame, as a throwaway line for some random nobody, and they don't even fucking discuss it.

Say what you will about the conclusion of Year of Hell, but this is a Reset Button. Year of Hell's excuse might have been silly, but at least they gave one. This? How the fuck do you start a Borg civil war and let that shit die on the vine? Why the fuck would you devote two hours of Trek to it? This is it. You can argue all about where the Borg started losing their edge, but this? This is demoting them to "guy who has to sort the soiled diapers in the landfil."

Oh, I added in two "three hour tour" instances - the first is for Janeway passing up going home with help from the Borg, and the second is for not getting a fucking spare part or two from the Klingon sphere.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -45/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 14

 

The FC promo reels also had a couple shots of Voyager in it. However, I'd really hope that for an ad for the second season of Voyager, a show they'd have plenty of visual effects ready for, they wouldn't just phone that in.

 

Damn, @Kyle is so close to the finish line.....don't take the cyanide pills!

 

My impression of nearly the entirety of Voyager was that it was phoned in. B&B wanted to fill up the time slot with "spaceships and sexy alien babes" -- beyond that, they didn't actually give a sliver of a rip about telling stories that were "Star Trek."

 

Hell, I just read somewhere that even Kate Mulgrew herself was checked out due to dealing with a divorce at the time. Seeing her acting in "Orange is the New Black, " it's a night and day difference.

 

Done!

 

Don't worry, I didn't kill myself. Took a family road trip to Yellowstone. Between being behind the wheel for the better part of 2,000 miles and the kids whining about the iPad running out of juice, I can't say that there weren't brief moments where it almost seemed like Voyager would be a welcome distraction.

Then, I'd hit the rumble strip on the side of the road, come to my senses, and realize that there is very little that would compare less favorably than Voyager.

I really enjoy her performances on OITNB, and it's a delight to see those few moments in Voyager where those acting chops make a cameo. Otherwise, I think virtually the entire cast was on autopilot.

 

Imperfection

Well, I hope you didn't get your fill of Borg melodrama last time, folks, because we're in for a lot more!

Unlike the Borg baby that the Voyager writing staff were perfectly happy with ignoring out of existence, they decide to wrap up the Borg kids story line. Let's face it, the last thing Voyager needs in its last season are underdeveloped characters shoehorned in when they're trying to wrap things up - at least they learned something from DS9.

Anyway, they found a home for the most inconvenient three of the four children, so Janeway is more than happy to drop them like a hot potato. Icheb and Seven are emo about seeing them go, but as Icheb is bitching Seven out about how it's too soon to turn off their alcoves, he notices that she's crying. Apparently, this isn't something she's supposed to be able to do (apparently Seven is a secret Visine addict), so they whisk her off to Sickbay. She insists nothing is wrong, but after ignoring the Doctor, proceeds to pass out in the Mess Hall. On Voyager, I'm sure that's a daily fucking occurrence, but because it's Seven, that means it's episode-worthy.

Basically, one of the many implants that would make it extremely fucking unlikely that Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres could walk away from an assimilation unscathed has malfunctioned, and is starting to cause the rest of her remaining implants to shut down. Or something. If the Voyager writing staff cared at all, they'd have noted the similarities to the virus the Borg Queen was threatening to release in Unimatrix Zero, and also noted that Seven was one of the last two Borg to get the fuck out of Space Second Life, and tied the two together. But no. Fuck, that's too goddamn much to expect our audience to understand, we'll just make it so that the crew has to save their favorite Mary Sue.

And it gets better, because, you see, they take the Delta Goddamn Flyer out to find a busted-ass Borg ship to steal a spare part for her. Supposedly, this episode and the following episode, Drive, aired out of order, which explains why they don't even bother explaining how they have already rebuilt the damn shuttle at, apparently, no cost or effort, but Drive doesn't really explain that either, so it just emphasizes the writing staff's incompetence all-the-more.

Anyway, they find one (and apparently don't bother looking for the fucking Transwarp coils there either), but get chased off by some aliens that looked so much like the damn Kazon that it just makes me wonder who else on staff is asleep at the wheel. However, they take it back, try it out, and find out that the spare won't work - she needs the part from a living drone, and explains that if the part failed while she was part of the Collective, she would have simply been dismantled, having outlived her usefulness to the Borg. While Icheb tries to convince the Doctor to take his version of the part (with some very convenient technobabble about how it wasn't as important that he have it because he got off the Maturation Chamber Express early, that also ignores why the Doctor would have kept it at all if it could have been removed), Seven runs off, leaving her commbadge in sickbay. Apparently, you can't scan over your own ship to find someone's fucking distinctive Borg live signs, so a search begins. Seven has naturally gone to Engineering, where the writers actually managed to eke out a decent scene between Seven and Torres regarding the nature of death to the Borg and to the Klingons.

After they find her, Janeway and Seven go off to have a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment in astrometrics, where the following hilarious exchange took place:

Janeway: I'm thirty thousand lightyears closer to Bloomington, Indiana.
Seven: Minus several members of your crew.



As if to continue being a bitch, she even pulls up a manifest of the crew Janeway has got murdered over the last six years (to their credit, they mention Lindsay Ballard, but they proceed to piss that away by not keeping their pimp hand strong over the CG artists responsible for the graphic, mentioning a "Commander J. Bartlett." Because Aaron Sorkin dramas are not in my wheelhouse, I paused it and immediately went and looked up who Voyager's XO was before getting murdered by the Tom Paris curse, since he would have been the only commander on board, before noting in Memory Alpha's trivia notes for the episode that it was a West Wing reference. Fuckers.). But her time is cut short, because Icheb has wired up his alcove to force his body to start rejecting the part, essentially requiring Seven, Janeway, and the Doctor to use his part instead of continuing to fuck around and mope, lest it wind up just as useless as the scavenged part.

Anyway, they drop the part into Seven's head, and all is better, more or less. The minuscule B-plot of the episode was that Icheb wanted to join Startfleet Academy, which Seven agrees to help him to do. He notes she is crying again, but no, this time, they are real tears. Which is good, because I don't think I could have sat through that again.

An extraordinarily boring episode that had plenty of potential, but per usual, poor execution.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: -45/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 14

 

Drive

Tom and Harry are off fucking around in an astroid field, ostensibly to test the new Delta Flyer, but per usual, it's being spent with Tom fucking around and Harry being a wet blanket. Anyway, an alien spaceship shows up, and the pilot basically slobbers all over Tom's racing-boner and challenges them. The Delta Flyer wins, but not before the other ship's engines get blown out or something.

Naturally, because a day can't go by on Voyager without them dragging some random passerby into their web of bullshit, they invite her back aboard Voyager and offer to help make repairs. And since apparently no one on the goddamn ship has any work to do, Torres is wandering around, harassing people into giving up their holodeck time so that she and Tom can have a romantic weekend off together and make all kinds of work for the jizz mopper. She even talks the Doctor out of his scheduled golf game (and yes, of all the things they choose to actually reference later, the Doctor's newfound obsession with golf is one of them).

Anyway, while Harry is busy pining over yet another unobtainable woman and Tom is practically passing out from the blood loss caused by his raging erection over racing, the alien woman informs them of an upcoming race that she's going to be participating in. They run off to talk with the rest of the senior staff about it - it's basically a Space Le Mans, started as some sort of celebration over the various species in the area finally ending their interstellar wars. Chuckles points out that it's essentially fuckery, but Janeway ignores him and insists they participate in the name of, fuck, I don't know, it's all fucking bullshit.

The alien chick lends them a fuel converter so that they can use the fuel required of the race (thus establishing the plot for the similarly awful Cars 2 a decade in advance), and Tom runs off to tell Torres that he won't be making their romantic getaway so that he can fuck around in the goddamn Delta Flyer. She tells him to go for it, but anyone with half a fucking brain could recognize that she was unhappy. Apparently, Tom lacks half a fucking brain, so he runs off and gets to work. She, meanwhile, goes and talks to Neelix, and eventually comes to the conclusion that she should probably break things off with Tom, since all he's really interested in is basically himself.

To avoid having to actually build a damn set for this episode, there's some random bullshit argument amongst the racers about whose ship should host the race festivities, so naturally Janeway shoehorns Voyager in as "neutral ground." At the opening ceremony, Harry and Tom show up in special racing outfits, which are not only comically awful, but entirely unflattering to Robert Duncan McNeill. Let's just say that the typical black pajamas forgive a lot of sins. Meanwhile, Torres is moping around, and talks with Seven, who basically says that maybe Tom will pay attention to her if she shares more of his interests.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in the wonderful world of Star Trek: Voyager, it's the woman's job to do whatever her man wants, lest he ignore her for fucking around in the holodeck and lusting after shuttlecraft that may or may not try to mind-fuck him.

Anyway, Torres goes ahead and makes herself one of the awful new uniforms, puts Harry on some BS assignment, and takes over as Tom's co-pilot for the race. Soon, it's time for the race to begin - Voyager waves the green flag by firing a photon torpedo ahead of the racers. They waste a photon torpedo on a fucking race. Anyway, the race is going smoothly for Voyager and crew, but after Torres pushes the Delta Flyer hard enough to get past the alien chick's ship, it again starts to fail miserably, and her co-pilot succumbs to Exploding Console Syndrome.

A brief investigation is held, which discovers that her ship had been sabotaged, however, she and the other racers agree that it's more important that the race continue. For peace, or something. Anyway, Harry volunteers to be her co-pilot and/or Male Gaze at her for the remainder of the race, and the race resumes. Torres uses the time to try to get Tom to open up about their relationship, but backs off once he actually determines that's what she's doing, and Harry uses the time to almost get blown up at the console of the alien woman's ship. After he overpowers her and steals her weapon, he yells "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON," in what I'm certain is Garrett Wang's biggest, scariest voice. He discovers that she's a Space Aryan, essentially plotting to sabotage the race and blow everyone the fuck up at the end so that there would be no peace in the mid-east.

Torres starts talking about their relationship again, which causes Tom to slam on the breaks and force her to actually talk instead of dancing around it. He tells her that he loves her more than the race or the other things he, y'know, actually spends time with, but that he didn't want to talk about it because he thought it was too "mushy" for her. Jesus fucking Christ, are you fucking teenagers? Tom notices that the alien woman's ship is flashing its high-beams at him, and he realizes that it's Morse code from Harry - it turns out that the converter the woman had given them for the Delta Flyer is also a bomb that will detonate and destroy everyone at the finish line. Tom and Torres rush away, dump the warp core and the converter, then race away from the blast radius as it detonates, with Tom asking Torres to marry him as they make their escape.

We assume the alien woman is dealt with, but it's never discussed - instead, we see the Delta Flyer flying off with "Just Married" painted on the side and a bunch of space garbage hanging off the back, indicating that Janeway has essentially authorized Tom and Torres to consummate their marriage all over the fucking Delta Flyer. I'm fine with the idea of Tom and Torres getting hitched, but it seemed more like an effort to shift that relationship into high-gear so that they could wrap it up by the end of the season than anything else, and going about it by essentially pointing out all the reasons why Tom makes for a terrible boyfriend, let alone a husband, is a pretty suspect way to do it.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -46/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 14

 

They also have a Lt. Cmdr. L. McGarry, Lt. Cmdr. T. Ziegler, Lt. J. Lyman, Lt. S. Seaborn Ens. Charles Young, and Ens. Claudia Craig, which they misspelled.

Oh, and Bartlet was misspelled too.

You'd think they would've at least steered clear of the higher ranks, since the existence of a crewmember who outranked Cavit would have merited at least passing mention in the pilot...

 

So they did a tribute to West Wing, and got both the West Wing names and their own ranks wrong. That's strange; this being Voyager, shouldn't there be at least three mistakes connected to every item that appears on screen?

 

And TIIC use Seven of fuckin' Nine to make this point. Seven, who has frigging Space Aspergers.

This show...

 

Also, Trek in general has such a horrendous track record with romance. Odo/Kira is about the only one that I don't fast foward most of their scenes together. Tom/Torres are my personal second favorite solely because of process of elimination, barely edging out Worf and Dax because none of their episodes come close to the stupidity of "Let He Who is Without Sin...."

 

LHWIWS is, in some ways, worse than anything Voyager ever put out there. At least when Voyager engaged in character assassination of its protagonists it wasn't as though those protagonists had any real continuity of character to begin with. LHWIWS isn't as bad a stand-alone episode as something like Spirit Folk, but it's even worse than Spirit Folk in the context of the rest of the show. There's really no way to reconcile LHWIWS with the rest of DS9 and Worf canon, and it's not even as though the episode is bad in a way where you can laugh at it. It's an episode best mothballed.

 

Relationships are bad in Trek, because they can't be consistent with what sexual sophistication the Federation is supposed to have.
By the 24th century, I'd expect humanity to be damned near Deltans already.
Everyone sucking and fucking anyone they damned well please, with no jealousy.
Fancy someone else? Throw 'em on the pile.

BUUUUT, it's a TV show written to the mores of 20th/21st century American assholes by producers who think the audience is even more stupid than I do, so you get this mish-mosh of feigned sophistication, and puritanical schoolyard giggling at the same fucking time.

"Oh, tee hee! Geordi is fucking holograms! ".

Yeah, so?

"Oh Em Gee!! Worf and Troi are fuuucking!! ".

Yeah, so?

"Oh Em Effing Gee!! Dax kissed a GIRL!!! :".

Yeah, so?

I hope when Trek gets back to TV it goes to HBO or Showtime.

 

They got that one exactly right, IMO. No mention of homosexuality as a problem, because this is the enlightened future; alien custom on the basis of SF-y biology as allegory for today's homphobia working nevertheless.

Compare that to the no doubt influential and well-meant kiss between Kirk and Uhura -- under the influence of evil alien mind-controllers, and clearly humilating to both of them! I always felt that if you wanted to be racist, that scene could easily be interpreted to reinforce rather than confront your prejudice, because that kiss was depicted as something that was wrong.

Vice versa, depicting something as right doesn't tackle the issue. Doing both at the same time -- well, that's DS9.

 

Maybe I'm more remembering the ads and the TV Guide tongue wagging for the lesbian kiss more than the episode itself...

 

And even worse is, this is the very first episode that deals with those two as a couple. Really? It's like TNG's decision to crib off of "The Naked Time" as it's second episode of the series. And their dynamic with rare exception just got more Moonlight-y from there.

But I've noticed on DS9 that on the rare occasion in which an episode bombed, it REALLY bombed. I suspect part of that is due to, ironically, the thing that made the show strong: the writing team's unity.

 

When I do a review, I read the Memory Alpha article to make sure I didn't miss anything particularly egregious, and when episodes from TNG or DS9 pop up in discussion, I review them there as well. When it's a bad DS9 episode, there's almost always quotes from interviews where the DS9 staff admit to how bad the episode was, and usually indicate that they understand just why it was awful. That sort of introspection from the Voyager writing staff is extraordinarily rare.

 

Hell, the Enterprise staff took that mentality one step further by having a whole ten minute segment in the Season Two DVDs about ANISB trying to ecplain how lulzy the episode was. And most of the explanation came from Scott Bakula and John Billingsley, no doubt with a pre written script by Bermaga* themselves. I wonder if they troed the same shit with TATV

*Enterprise shippers did agree on one point: regardless of who was team Archer or team Tucker, we all agreed Bermaga was the most detrimental ship to ever happen to Star Trek. and I'm glad Terra Nove failed.

 

It kills me inside that Braga is involved with the new Cosmos. I'm pretty sure we'd just have to show Neil deGrasse Tyson Threshold and he'd refuse to ever participate again.

 

Repression

The thing that has always kind of bothered me about the Bajorans is that it's very easy to write them as one-note characters. So, when you open on Voyager stealing one of DS9's sets, with some guy chanting in Bajoran, it's pretty easy to guess that they're going to go ahead and milk DS9's story teat for a bit, but, much like everything else on Voyager, do so incompetently.

Back on the ship, Tom and Torres are in a holographic movie theater, about to watch some B-movie or something, but it's simpler than that, really - Tom quickly deletes the audience so they can get their bone on. However, they see one silhouette down in front - they go down to discover a comatose yellow shirt who had helped Tom make the program. Personally, if I was making a movie theater program to bang my wife in, I wouldn't ask one of the guys at work for help, but I guess that's why I don't fly spaceships. Tuvok, itching for a good Scooby Doo mystery, starts the investigation immediately, claiming a distinctly un-Vulcan "hunch," and runs into another crew member rifling through the yellow-shirt's things, putting her at the top of his shit list.

However, the suspicions go by the wayside when she and yet another crew member end up comatose. Chuckles makes an obvious realization - all of the crew members were once Maquis. They suspect that something related to the last Midas data stream might have spurred the attacks. Chell even shows up to be his usual paranoid self, because apparently we can pay actors to reprise their roles for fanwankery. Tuvok accuses Kim of knowing something of the crimes, since the data stream had brought him news that one of his friends had been killed by the Maquis. You might be thinking that he should have heard about that in the same data transmission that told the Maquis that their rebellion had been crushed beneath the heel of Benjamin Sisko, but you would be wrong, for reasons.

The yellow-shirt awakens, but cannot remember who attacked him. How convenient for the plot. Chuckles orders the Maquis to pair off, but Torres instantly disobeys this order. When Chuckles finds out about this from Chell, he runs off to find her crammed into a bin in the cargo bay. He turns and finds Tuvok, but his requests for help are ignored, as Tuvok immediately drops him and forces a mind meld on him.

Two things here. If the other crew had suffered a neck pinch and mind meld, the Doctor should have been able to pick up on that. Second thing. Mind melds are OK when they're consensual, but supposedly, they're pretty rapey otherwise - that's why it was such a big fucking deal when Spock did it in STVI. By this point in the episode, Tuvok has done it to five different people. And you know there's going to be no damn consequences.

Anyway, Harry devises a way to use some science bullshit to get an outline of the attacker in the holodeck because of displaced photons or some fucking nonsense that you know is inaccurate. Tuvok comes in, beginning to suspect himself, and requests to know where he was at the time of the attack, but the computer locks him out. Maybe the Voyager fucking brain trust could have tried accessing the computer records to find where everyone was aboard, find this road block for Tuvok, and have been able to prevent all of this bullshit. After overriding the lock, the computer reveals it was he who committed the crime.

After locking him in the Brig, Janeway discovers that Stereotype Bajoran has somehow been in control of Tuvok's actions, a vedek so fucking awful that the Maquis didn't even want his help. He had captured Tuvok and fried his brain just enough to be reactivated as an Auber-Maquis agent later on. An embedded subliminal message in one of Tuvok's letters from the Alpha Quadrant triggered Tuvok to start mind-fucking the same trigger into other Maquis crew.

As Tuvok is discussing this with Janeway, he grabs a commbadge and calls Chuckles, muttering the same phrase that Gul Dukat used whenever he was about to bang Kai Winn, which activates him as well. Chuckles proceeds to call up the rest of the Maquis and takes the damn ship, but only after changing into their single Maquis outfits from Season 1. That's right, all it takes is a handful of Maquis to overtake an entire Federation starship. Chuckles calls Tuvok up to test his loyalty in the ready room, asking Tuvok to phaser Janeway as proof. Tuvok, however, instead incapacitates Chuckles and takes it right. He goes back and un-melds the minds of the other crew, effectively hitting the refresh button on the entire episode in one fell sweep.

Some of the throwbacks were nice, but they only would have really worked had there been actual tension between the Starfleet and Maquis crew. They claim as such in previous episodes, but even in this one, the only "evidence" presented in the episode of that is a statement of "There hasn't been hostility between the Maquis and the rest of the crew for years." So, at this point, it's a matter of questioning why it even matters.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: -46/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 14

 

Ah, yes, Chell. Ignore the guy for five years, then bring him back as exactly the same one-dimensional buttmonkey you wrote him as the first time, no matter how out of step it is with how everyone else on the ship changed.

 

Tim Russ is my favorite actor on the show, but even he couldn't save this mess of an episode. As Kyle said, the integration of the Maquis with the Federation officers was such a non-issue, so who gives a shit? Hint: neither Berman nor Braga, evidently.

To their credit, Enterprise had some attempt at not hand waiving the semi understandable resentment of Archer towards Vulcans (and T'Pol by extension), so I guess some lessons were learned from Happy Days: Voyager

@tafkats , given Voyager's nature, you'd think there would've been more reoccurring characters from within the ship. Ensign Wildman being a prime example since Naomi became such a fixure on the show. But then the monkeys on typewriters couldn't develop the main cast consistently from one episode to the next.

 

The terrible thing is that whenever they do get featured, it ends up being such a shock that it takes away from their appearance. Both Chell and the first comatose guy, Tabor, had appeared before. And there are characters like Ayala, who almost never speak but constantly show up in the background; for some reason, they're basically only used as generic crewmen.

Part of the delight of DS9 was that they had recurring characters that were actually characters - I mean, who would have predicted how pivotal to the show Garak would become, or how they'd be able to write an entire episode related to, basically, a mute piece of scenery who somehow had more characterization than half of the cast of Voyager. Bar waitresses were as important to plots as leads, and they experienced growth and change. DS9 was not afraid to let minor characters be part of A-plots, and they often spent their B-plots advancing their characters. If I were doing reviews of DS9 episodes, I think the times where I could go, "Oh, yeah, and Characters A and B were off doing X and Y, but who fucking cares" would be minimal, because they were actually important.

Another delight was that they did not assume their viewers were victims of clinical brain death.

 

Critical Care

Some used car salesman flies up to a floating hospital above some planet that is so gray and brown that you'd think it was rendered by a PS4. He makes his way through the crowded ward to one of the administrators, before pitching him the find of the century. He takes out the mobile emitter, and activates the Doctor, who is quite unhappy about having basically been stolen. However, he quickly goes to help an injured alien, proving his worth to the administrator, who quickly buys him up. While there, he meets a young, harried doctor who is making do with very minimal supplies, and no support from the administration to get more. The Doctor suggests that Voyager could help, but the other doctor dismisses it, saying that the paperwork to make a communications call is impenetrable.

Back on the Ship of Dreams, Tom and Harry stumble to Sickbay so that the Doctor can patch them up after a rough game of hockey. Had the staff been thinking, they could have actually made an exhausted and beaten Tom desperately trying to receive aid after a romantic evening with the missus, but no, it's Tom, Harry, and the holodeck. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, they discover that the Doctor is even more aloof than usual, and after they, Torres, and Janeway run a diagnostic, they find it's just a basic training file copy of the Doctor, not the real thing. I thought the Doctor was an all-or-nothing affair, not that there were bits and pieces that they could load up if necessary.

Anyway, I'm willing to forgive it, since it's a quibble in an otherwise-good episode. Neelix immediately suspects a trader that the Doctor had treated recently after eating Neelix's cooking, and they soon realize how he must have concocted the plan to steal him - they set out to retrace his steps.

Back on the Hospital ship, the Doctor is fitting in well, helping the drastically understaffed "red" level - even helping a young man with an aptitude for medicine who has a lingering, but easily-treated disease. He comes to discover the man hasn't been treated because his "TC" is too low - essentially, a number the hospital ship assigns for him based on his socioeconomic status and contributions to society. The computer has determined that they could lose a miner with relatively little impact. The administrator then shows up to inform the Doctor of his purchase, and that he would be transferred to the "blue" level, devoted to patients with a much higher "TC."

The Doctor is shocked to find that the "blue" level is essentially a spa, with spacious treatment areas, calm and quiet, bright lighting, and multiple doctors and nurses for each patient. The administrator explains that these individuals, due to their "TC," are due this level of treatment, since they are, essentially, irreplaceable. The Doctor is even more terrified to see that medicine that would have cured his miner friend's condition is being used to simply help promote good arterial health in these well-to-do patients.

Voyager, meanwhile, has tracked down a mining colony who is extremely unhappy that Voyager has the materials the trader had made off with. January offers it back in return for information about what they colony had received from the trader.

Back in the "red" level, the Doctor convinces the other young doctor to try to update the miner's "TC" so that he can receive his medication, lying about an expertise in technology. The computer rejects the update, however, due to a lack of authorization. With little other choice, the Doctor harasses one of the "blue" level nurses into letting him treat a patient with the medicine, pocketing it and administering it to his friend, who is amazed that the Doctor has seemingly been able to cut through the red tape. While the other doctor is hesitant to help the Doctor distribute the medicine throughout the "red" level, the miner eagerly agrees to assist.

By then, Voyager has caught up with the trader's last victim, who managed to lose his wife to the trader's charms. When they track her down, she reveals that her husband was a bore, and that the trader was much more interesting - she suspects Janeway of trying to move in on her man. In a truly comedic moment, Janeway takes Tuvok's hand, and explains that she already has a man, leading the woman to tell them where the trader is, and implying that they should tell him to get home to bang her. They track him down, drop out of warp, and immediately beam him to the brig, thus concluding a far more satisfying chase than in all of Live Fast and Prosper.

On the hospital ship, things are looking up - the doctor is impressed at the cure rate in his ward, and the Doctor has become more ambitious in his thievery. However, it catches up to him - he makes a visit to discover his friend has been transferred to the "white" level - the morgue. Enraged, the Doctor confronts the administrator about it, who explains that he died because he had received so much extra medication that the computer couldn't allocate the medicine that would actually save him from a secondary infection. He then explains that he knows what the Doctor has been doing, and ties him directly into the computer, who materializes and dematerializes him at whim, giving him mere minutes with each patient on the "blue" level, making him little more than a slave.

Tuvok is interrogating the trader, basically by implying that he's going to mind-meld with him and take the information regarding the Doctor's whereabouts by force. Neelix steps in, and gives him some food. Soon, he starts to feel nauseous - unlike before, Neelix really had made him sick with his food, and this time, it was on purpose. Neelix explains how painful the symptoms can be, and without a doctor on board, there's no one who could treat him. He finally gives up the Doctor's location. And here's the beautiful part - Tuvok starts going off on Neelix for the unethical move of poisoning the prisoner, but Neelix calls him on his bullshit, since he was threatening a mind rape.

The Doctor, meanwhile, tricks the young doctor to come up to the blue level and transfer him to his mobile emitter. Once transferred, he confronts the administrator, injecting him with something. When the administrator wakes up, he's immobile, and the computer thinks he's the Doctor's miner friend. The Doctor has injected him with the same virus that killed his friend, and with his friend's blood factors swimming through the administrator's bloodstream, the computer thinks they are one and the same. So, the Doctor offers a deal - all he has to do is override the computer for the "red" level, giving everyone the medication they need, and then he'd be able to get his too, but otherwise, he was going to suffer a pretty painful death. Yes, the Doctor is basically going full Dexter on this asshole. The young doctor questions the Doctor's ethics, but the Doctor is undeterred, having decided that no matter what he does, he's part of a system that is actively "doing harm" to the patients in their care, so his solution will, at least, do less harm.

Voyager shows up, but can't beam the Doctor out due to interference from the ship, and the only person who can talk with them is the administrator, who is obviously indisposed at the moment. They beam aboard, just as the administrator finally authorizes moving the affected patients to the "blue" level. Back on Voyager, the Doctor is disappointed to hear from Seven that his ethical subroutines hadn't malfunctioned. She explains that his solution to the problem was Borg-like in its efficiency, which does little to assuage the Doctor's fears - that he can now comfortably live in moral shades of gray.

It's episodes like this that make me amazed how far off the rails Voyager has gone sometimes. You go from a bottle episode where they literally play Scooby Doo, to this, which is not only a decent story, with good acting and balanced A and B plots, but a story that actually looks at a social issue and says something about it. It manages to be both an indictment of our healthcare system, which is mired in red tape and hamstrung into substandard care by the insurance industry, but it also points out how dangerous a real meritocracy can be. It makes us question how we determine the worth of an individual, how they can advance and better themselves in a society, and just how indispensable someone can really be.

In short, it does everything good science fiction is supposed to do. And how did they do it? By letting one of the characters stray into the gray. Maybe if that happened a bit more on Voyager, it would have been better-regarded.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: -46/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 14

 

Of all the things to crib from DS9, this need not be one of those.

The Janeway/Tuvok thing you mentioned. ...I'd forgotten how I cracked up at that exchange the first time I saw this episode.

 

The problem with the Bajorans is that they were deliberately written as being "24th century Palestinians".

Which makes you wonder. Where is the Israeli Defense Force when you need them?

 

Oh good Lord. The Bajorans were 24th century Jews, not Palestinians. The Cardassians were Nazis. Get it?