Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Dax was a great concept in theory, but they never really figured out how to utilize it with Jadzia. It was only when they killed Jadzia that they found a hook for the character, so they made up for lost time as best they could. It's too bad she couldn't have died during season 5, preferably while they were retaking DS9.

Storytelling wise, Trill are Trek's Timelords.
Lot they coulda done with that.
Still could.
Dax incarnations can go back to Kirk's era, and centuries past Nemesis.

Is it wrong that I liked Dax 2:Electric Boogaloo better? She was a character that at best should've been a reoccurring character, but I felt like I got to know more about Ezri than I did about Jadzia, where the bulk of her episodes revolved around Curzon before they began trying to make her and Worf happen. I'm glad to find I'm not the only one that didn't care for Dax, though.

I mentioned before that when DS9 tanked, it really tanked, but I think that speaks to how in tune the writers were with one another. Unlike on Voyager that could have a shitty ass A story that only Braga could have penned but a B story that was so obviously written by Jeri Ryan or another writer with talent.

Plus, their showrunners were more open to listening to the actors. When Ira Behr planned to have Kira and Dukat pair up in season seven, Nana Visitor chewed his ass out for two hours about that. She won,thank God.

Garret Wang was a lot more polite about his Berman criticism and he gets turned down from directing gigs on Enterprise.

That difference makes it way on screen.

Hell, the symbiote Dax predates the Federation, if I remember correctly. Emory Dax was the one around the Enterprise era, and she was number 3 or 4.

I agree it was a waste to focus so much energy on just Curzon and his Wacky Hijinx (tm) of cheating and Klingons and getting a potential host kicked out the program because she made his peen hard.

Seriously, no one calls DS9 to task for that one.

The Iliad, most likely compiled well after the Odyssey, and vastly superior.

That last one was a stroke of genius, in pure SF strangeness. You find out someone really fucked you over... only since then, he has become you. Would you like to hate yourself? Apologise to yourself? Forgive yourself? Indict yourself?

Of course, a stronger script and a much stronger actress would have been needed to milk that. But they kind of got it right with Ezri eventually, as you pointed out.

Same here, even though I did forget her name. Ezri it was. Jadzia Dax was a lot of potential wasted thanks to a bad actress. I guess the writers just stopped caring about her at some point.

All Trek series have those bland characters. The combination of actors with potential and writers seeing this and acting on it can remedy the situation. See: Worf and O'Brien on DS9 compared to TNG. Growling and saying some transporter thingy line over and over vs. becoming really interesting and fun to watch.

To stay on topic, however: VOY had a whole array of such forgettable characters. I haven't seen every episode of that show by a long shot (maybe half) but there are only three I actually wanted to see. Neelix was fun and had a certain serious edge later on. Tom Paris was the archetypical loveable renegade before they stooped into the whole relationship thingy. Because that obviously was the only thing they could think of to make him 'grow' (they basically cut off his balls). The Doctor was fun too before they began to criminally overuse him.

The rest? Token Black Guys with Chuckles leading the Boring Pack.

Tuvok was always my personal fave, in large part to the actor, because he seemed to get the lion's share of bad scripts. Plus he and Neelix played well off one another, even when their screens could be less than stellar. Robert Picardo owned his scenes and even Kate Mulgrew could turn in a good performance for whichever one of her bipolar personalities the script called for that week.

Than you've got Robert Beltran. Has he gotten an acting gig since Voyager, at all?

Um....maybe someone could crowd-fund "Night Of The Comet 2"? .

Not much. Mostly minor roles and one-time appearances.

His most steady work was as a character in 11 episodes of Big Love on HBO.

I didn't really mind Jadzia. No, she wasn't the most interesting character, but they needed an "old friend who the captain mulls over his/her moral dilemmas with" character, and as far as those characters go, she was better-developed than Crusher or Tuvok. And the Trill thing led to some interesting stories, even if they didn't always make sense.

If only she hadn't married Worf, causing every Dax episode to mutate into yet another "Grrrr, grrr, we are Klingons, we have HONOR" snoozefest.

With Tuvok, his Vulcaness made it diffucult inherently to be the Captain's support shoulder. Spock worked better because of his dual heritage and often struggled with emotion more than a "typical" Vulcan such as Tuvok.

As for Dax, I actually liked the Post Worf stuff because I hated the 9 million episodes that focused on sucking Curzon's dick a lot more.

Wow, I finally got done reading through this whole thread, and I'm a bit in awe.

So, when you're done with VOY, think you'd risk doing the same with ENT?

Naw, I already took over for ecky since at the time I was probably the only person who was actually a fan at the time that it aired.

RL has caught up with me which is why I haven done it in a while.

This thread has been running for almost as long as Voyager itself did. I'm pretty sure that attempting Enterprise as well would literally kill me.

Though perhaps B&B could be held responsible. That might make it worth it...

Dooo eeettt....

Prophecy

Voyager's under attack! There's a shock, nobody in the fucking quadrant likes them. But it looks like the Alpha Quadrant is getting in on hating them as well, as a Klingon D7 battle cruiser (!) is who is whaling on them for a change.

Since the ship is so old, Voyager has no problem tracing them through their cloak, and quickly takes it out. The Klingons refuse to surrender - they're good ol' fashioned Federation hating Klingons, not the "valued allies in the war against the Dominion" kind.

Janeway insists that the treaty was signed more than 80 years ago, and convince them to come aboard after name-dropping B'Elanna. Upon meeting her, the captain is shocked to find her knocked up, and starts asking all about when she got in the family way. Tuvok and Chuckles are all about him hearing about the Khitomer accords (!!), but he wants to get back to his ship, rather abruptly.

Turns out, the Captain is busy interpreting a bunch of ancient Klingon mythology to find Torres' baby to be some sort of magical Jesus baby. His XO is not convinced, but the Captain orders them to start preparations for "the separation."

These preparations include blowing the fuck out of their ship, apparently. With a ruse to get Voyager to beam 200+ Klingons aboard, Janeway, of course, helps and beams them to the shuttle bay. Which makes sense, there should be plenty of room given how many shuttles they've crashed like teenagers on prom night.

Once aboard, the Captain explains that a century previous. the ship's ancestors started getting antsy, so they'd decided to pretend to be Bajorans for a while and head to the Delta Quadrant at the behest of some space Dead Sea Scrolls. And now, he thinks he's found space Jesus.

The Voyager crew thinks that's a crock of shit. And why wouldn't they? This scroll BS has been made up for this episode, and Klingon mythology gets pretty fucking sparse once you get behind who Kahless fucked and who he fucked up.

Tuvok's busy being a racist and worrying about what sort of havoc the Klingons are going to wreck upon the ship (as if it doesn't get repaired completely on a weekly basis), but Neelix bitches about how the women and children will have it locked in the shuttle bay. Guess what? If you don't want to sleep on cots in some plush-ass Starfleet sickbay, maybe don't go fucking blowing up your goddamn ship? And laneway is busy "doubling up" on security as though they can be replicated like shuttlecraft or photon torpedoes. Which is to say, fuck, maybe that's entirely possible.

Neelix is relishing making Klingon cuisine, and the Klingons appear to actually enjoy his cooking, but his attempts to break up a fight don't go over well. Harry does a far better job, with a Klingon woman deciding he'll make for a good mate. Garrett Wang does an excellent "oh fuck" look of terror, I'll give him that, but the Klingon woman is bound to be fucking disappointed in his fucking. The guy's only fucked something with a pulse once, I'm convinced.

Anyway, to give the Klingons some place to bunk, Neelix decides to stay with Tuvok. He replies "There must be some mistake." And gives a Vulcan equivalent of that "oh fuck" look of terror. Neelix promises fun. And we know that is a lie.

Meanwhile, the Klingons are practically treating Torres like she's Harry Styles and they're a bunch of One Direction obsessed teenage girls. In fact, they're refusing to eat until Torres gives them a meet-and-greet. So she grudgingly agrees. However, the XO immediately calls her out for only being half-Klingon, and is fucking furious about it. The Captain claims that it's not written anywhere that the mother would have to be full-blooded Klingon, but the XO is outraged, especially after learning that Paris' involvement means about 1/4 Klingon heritage.

The Captain soon reveals that he's not exactly all about those scrolls. Apparently, their pilgrimage has been a bitch and a half, and he's decided that he's tired of seeing his crew suffering. All he wants is for Torres to bless a planet, but she isn't going to lie about it. The Captain instead proposes to bend the truth and get Torres to help him interpret the scrolls in a way that will match her life. I don't get how that doesn't end with her not fucking lying to the rest of the Klingons, but he rapidly rushes ahead to claiming that it's entirely possible that the prophecy was created by some crazy asshole in a cave. Very subtle, guys. Torres even points out that the scrolls are essentially so vague that they could be interpreted to mean anything.

She points out one specific passage about being victorious against 10,000 warriors, but discounts the Borg, despite Janeway having gotten millions of them murdered. However, the Captain is willing to work with it, though he's disappointed that she follows roughly 0% of Klingon traditions.

He then breaks out, essentially, a prayer mat for a mid-day prayer session. Again, super-subtle. Torres supposedly hasn't done this since childhood, so it's apparently a "done thing" by Klingons, even not Space-Jesus-Pray-To-Allah ones, but it's fucking incredible we haven't run across it before. This is the short of one-off shit that not only becomes a bullet point on the Klingon wikipedia page, fucking up canon for everyone who follows, but is also pretty insulting when you consider how much effort Klingon world-building received on DS9 and TNG.

Anyway, Harry goes off to Sickbay to be treated for a bite mark he's received from the Doctor. The Doctor is incredibly cavalier about it, saying that Harry basically has to kill her or fuck her, and he doesn't have much say in the matter. That's right, the Doctor's basically telling Harry to put up with unwanted sexual advances, and is going to do nothing to prevent him from being sexually assaulted. Imagine if this was a plot for a female character. What the fuck. He then goes ahead and gives him an authorization to fuck aliens, A.K.A. Form One-oh-One-Dash-Riker-Slash-Kirk.

In the mess hall, Torres goes full-Klingon and regales them with tales of, uh, getting in a fight on a shuttlecraft? The XO accuses her of spinning stories, and goads Tom into accepting a proposal for a fight to the death. And, I'll give him this - the actor does a damn good job of capturing the essence of a TOS-era Klingon. Speech pattern, smile, all of it - much better than the Captain, who's basically "guy in silly forehead makeup."

Torres wonders what the fuck he was thinking. He replies with "Why are you so sure I'd lose?" An exasperated "Oh please" follows, as we all know the only murderous psychopath on the ship is the fucking captain. She says "There will be no deathmatches aboard my ship," so the Klingon Captain proposes a non-lethal bout where the first person to knock the other to the ground with play-acting bat'leths three times wins. The XO screams that they're coward's rules, and is totally accurate in that assessment. Fuck, Kirk fought Spock with some goddamn lethal q-tips and made it out, but for Voyager, we can't even risk a torn shirt?

Tuvok is then a total asshole and asks Tom if he has a holodeck program to get him out of this mess. He gets all the best moments in this episode.

Anyway, Harry's crawling through Jeffries tubes that inexplicably follow the lengths of corridors, and runs into Neelix, who is jealous that Harry's going to get some Klingon ass. He sees her coming, and then starts throwing Harry against the wall and yelling at him. The Klingon woman is instantly aroused. They will fuck.

Anyway, they fire up the holodeck for the battle between the XO and Tom, and let's just say that they're really not flattering without the rest of the Klingon getup. Anyway, I think this is supposed to be suspenseful, but it ultimately culminates in the XO passing out due to an apparently latent case of Klingon HIV or something. And apparently the entire crew has it, and it's contagious only to Klingons. And Torres and her baby have already caught it. Nobody picked up on it before because it's made of magic DNA. Of course.

Anyway, the fact that the baby got sick apparently makes it a poor candidate for being space Jesus, so some of the Klingons decide to mutiny. As Chuckles prepares to lead an away team to the planet the captain was going to dump them on, he gets knocked out like a chump, and the Klingons take over a transporter room and start to beam the crew down to the surface. That's right - Voyager is being taken again by technologically inferior aliens.

Until, of course, the Klingons beam to the Bridge to take out the senior staff, who are the only ones who can shoot anything. That's right - the Klingons are at Stormtrooper-levels of accuracy.

Anyway, after the XO gets revived from the phaser blast, the Doctor comes to save the day yet again. He's apparently cloned a bunch of Torres' baby's stem sells, which can miraculously cure Klingon HIV. This is good enough proof that the baby is space Jesus after all, so the Klingons agree to move down to the planet.

And to wrap it up, Torres is gifted a sword-of-Kahless style bat'leth by the Klingon Captain, and Tuvok finds Neelix in post-coital bliss in Tuvok's now-thrashed quarters. Neelix fucked in Tuvok's quarters. Neelix fucked in Tuvok's quarters. Neelix fucked in Tuvok's quarters.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: -50/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16

Neelix fucking

You know what? Good for Neelix. At least someone is making the most of exploring the galaxy.




It's also a good display of personal growth that he's fucking other adults now.

The Void

Neelix is busy serving a multi-course meal that Seven made out of supplies that a ship struggling its way through the Delta Quadrant shouldn't have. But Seven lays down some sick burns relating to Tom's predilection for PB&J over grown-up food.

Unsurprisingly, Voyager gets sucked into some fucking anomaly of the week, and it drops them in a region of subspace called the Void - a pocket of space without any stars or energy resources. Apparently, to make up for seven goddamn years of play-acting at resource scarcity, Voyager's going to go for broke in one episode.

Some Vaadwaur immediately try to mug them, but another ship joins in the fray, taking out their shields enough to beam almost all their food stores and some random engineering console, because why the fuck not? Tom can't follow them into warp, and they discover deuterium's been stolen as well - and there ain't any for the Bussard collectors to gather.

A third ship introduces itself to Voyager politely. He looks like a Cardassian fucked a Gorn. After inviting him aboard, the captain reveals he's been stuck in the Void for five years - funnels essentially pull vessels in, but nothing can escape. He suggests an alliance to attack new ships caught in the Void, and to attack other scavengers, and immediately starts sniffing around for Voyager's -50 fucking photon torpedoes. Janeway acts all high and mighty about trading weapons, despite having explicitly pointed out they've handed out replicators that could be made to make weapons in the past. This...wait for it...torpedoes the talks of the alliance.

Torres reveals that the Void itself leeches energy from the ship as well - they have about 10 days of runtime left. Seven also figures out a way to "theoretically" escape, and Tuvok suggests modifying the shields to compensate for the strain.

And let me take a moment to ask - if you can just reprogram the shields to be fucking stronger, why the fuck wouldn't you do it anyway?

The exterior shots also show Voyager in pitch darkness, illuminated only by the windows and running lights on the hull. Apparently, normal space is a fucking bright place. That's one of the things I liked about ST:TMP especially - light had to be coming from somewhere.

Anyway, Voyager makes a run for it and totally fucks it up, using up almost all of their energy and bringing down the warp core in the process. After deciding to track down the raiders who stole their supplies, they find it nearly destroyed and picked clean. They decide to steal an engine casing to convert to fuel, and do so by fucking beaming it out of there. That's a bit like swapping out your bulbs for CFLs, then running your AC for 24 hours straight.

Torres and Seven discover that they beamed up some random alien along with the casing. Keep in mind, this is a transporter that if one thing goes wrong, you merge two people together into a sentient lifeforms that you have to murder in 40 minutes or less, so it's a fucking miracle this goddamn thing didn't end up like the fucking Philadelphia Experiment. They take him to sickbay, where the Doctor reveals that he has no verbal communication skills and lungs strong enough to survive the destruction of the ship.

The crew then realizes that the captain that suggested an alliance was responsible for destroying the raider, and after him pulling a "possession is 9/10ths of the law" like he's a goddamn middle schooler, Voyager steals their stuff back. But, you see, they're principled, so they don't steal his food stores as well. God forbid we actually have a moral quandary here. Chuckles and Tuvok question the logic of that, but this is apparently one of those fucking crosses Janeway decides it's worth dying on.

Janeway instead decides to propose a micro Federation with other Void residents, including sharing their resources and technology. She flip-flopped in the space of 20 fucking minutes. The wonderful thing? As she pitches it to some random aliens, she offers them food, "Compliments of the Alliance." But don't break out your six shooters, because you know Janeway isn't actually going to be doing anything remotely ethically gray.

Back in Sickbay, the Doctor is listening to some opera music, and has given the stowaway the masturbatory name of "Fantome." Seven immediately takes the Doctor's findings and does something actually useful with it, starting to set up a language based on audible tones.

A new ship shows up (from the Hierarchy, those guys from Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy that look like Doctor Who aliens), and Janeway puts Voyager into action to demonstrate the power of the alliance, investing two torpedoes in driving off the captain that's now proving to be a thorn in their side. However, as Voyager starts to take more damage, one of the aliens they'd contacted to form an alliance come to the rescue - they're going to be the first members of the Alliance.

Janeway quickly gathers more recruits, and brings them over to Neelix to make them immediately regret their decision. In the kitchen is a giant open flame. Earlier in this same goddamn episode, Neelix demurred from lighting a candle to illuminate a meal of Tom and B'Elanna's due to the oxygen use. Like five damn minutes ago. Are hot plates not Federation issue? Janeway also notes that one of the Alliance members contributed technology to Voyager that "tripled their replicator efficiency." How fucking convenient.

The Doctor takes Fantome out for a walk, and quickly discovers that some of the Alliance members find his species to be little more than vermin. Rather than refusing to deal with a bunch of fucking space racists, Janeway agrees to get other members of Fantome's species off of their ships, in the spirit of tolerance. Holy shit, what a bunch of fucking garbage.

Anyway, the Doctor soon ends up playing host to four of Fantome's people, who have quickly picked up the artificial music-based language, revealing a deep intelligence, and have revealed that they're essentially native to the Void. And Janeway soon discovers that the fucking space racist murdered a ship full of people to get a part they needed to enhance the warp drive. And Janeway pitches a fit about how now, using the part would make them accessories to murder. As if that's bothered her before.

So, she kicks them out of the Alliance, and a couple of other aliens leave with them, apparently not so bothered by their acts. Janeway then goes on to bitch about how she should have known not to trust goddamn space racists. Yes, Janeway, that's correct. You should not trust space racists. I'd think that's Command 101, but maybe they're too busy memorizing the list of women Kirk fucked in the Academy nowadays.

The space racists go to team up with the raiders to form a similar strategy, so that kicks things into high gear for the Alliance, as shown by a damn orchestral music montage. Part of the plan includes beaming Fantome's people to one of the raider ships to sabotage it, as apparently that's OK now. And they finally escape into normal space with the remaining members of the Alliance, who are thrilled to escape the Void.

The truly sad thing about this episode is that it wasn't that bad, aside from the usual batshit insanity related to Janeway-centric episodes and the criminal underuse of the actor who played goddamn Hugh from TNG. As in, it could have served as a damn good arc for multiple episodes. As in, the concept of actually having to scrap together Alliances, trade technology, and conserve resources could have worked. This episode proves that Voyager, as a concept, could have worked - it's a Year of Hell that didn't have Janeway literally crashing her ship into a reset button. At barest minimum, it could have served as a better two-parter than what's next on the docket, Workforce. And yet, in the end, the slate is again wiped clean. We won't see anything from any of the alliance members. We won't see any benefits from the technology they've attained. In the end, this episode could have never happened, and Voyager, as a B&B joint for UPN, would not have turned out any differently.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: -52/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16

Workforce, Part 1

Well, someone got the budget for some matte paintings. Possibly one of the nicest ones on Voyager - tons of movement (both from characters and camera movement) and depth. A bit dated looking in terms of the CG, but for the time, it would have been pretty damn good. Janeway has to go fuck it up with her presence.

It looks like she has a new job, monitoring some technobabble with her qualifications in other technobabble. She says, "I can already tell it's going to be much better than my last job." Thanks for fucking reminding us of how awful your show is, guys.

Naturally, Janeway almost immediately starts fucking it all up. However, it serves as an introduction to Jaffa, the obvious Potential Love Interest. As they start to flirt, though, Seven cuts them off - seems she has a new job as well, as an "efficiency monitor," and is going by Annika. Jaffa asks her out to dinner, but she demurs, all while stealing glances at her.

We then move on to Tom, who is at the Only Bar on the Goddamn Planet, regaling the bartender who is now his boss with all the jobs he's fucked up in the past. Way to ingratiate yourself to your employer, Tom. Apparently, Seven got him fired from his last job in the space of a few hours.

And during Happy Hour, Tuvok shows up, laughing uproariously and over-explaining jokes. Jaffa is a fucking dick to him. Real winner of a guy to get your panties wet over, Janeway. Anyway, despite telling him that she couldn't go out, she shows up to the bar anyway. Torres shows up too - looking very tired, and very pregnant, and very alone.

Jaffa walks Janeway home, and she describes Earth as overpopulated, polluted, and lacking in work. He tries to invite her up to "discuss work," but Janeway doesn't fuck on the first date, so she politely declines.

The next morning, they're due for their inoculations. Tuvok has a PTSD-style flashback to getting inoculated before - in his Starfleet uniform. But fuck any sensical structure, cut to Chuckles, Harry, and Neelix on the Delta Flyer - a.k.a. a ship that, if destroyed, no one of value would be lost. Harry's poor widdle tum tum is hurting, but Chuckles asks them to start trying to track down Voyager, as it's straight-up missing.

Back on Voyager, the Doctor is rocking a command uniform and trying to repair shit in Engineering, so you know shits all manner of fucked. However, after an intruder alert to the bridge, he rushes up and is thrilled to find Chuckles and Harry. He explains that Tom ran the ship into a fucking subspace mine, and forced the crew to evacuate. After some ships come to claim salvage rights, the Doctor had to fight back and hide in a nebula. And it turns out the mine belonged to those ships. In the process of hiding, the Doctor lost contact with the escape pods.

Meanwhile, Tuvok's flashback becomes a little more clear - he realizes that some people who are treating their radiation sickness are actually doing far more. However, since he doesn't actually remember any real details, and since nobody else can remember it, he looks like a crazy person. And Jaffa continues being a dick about Tuvok's sense of humor. This apparently turns Janeway on enough to invite him back to her apartment for a home-cooked meal.

Back at the bar, Tom is chatting up Torres. It's obvious they have similar...chemistry (if you can call it that on this train wreck of a show), but after hitting on her, she reveals that she's pregnant, which catches him off-guard.

Then, in a sequence of scenes too boring to recount, but featured Harry bitching about his stomach some more and the Doctor resenting being a Doctor, they track down the crew. Meanwhile, Janeway has fucking ruined dinner, so instead, she and Jaffa decide to do the horizontal tango.

Having tracked down the crew, Chuckles tries to get the officials of the planet to put them in contact, but their liaison claims that he's interviewed several of them, and they know nothing of Voyager. He also refuses to let them beam down, and a planetary defense shield prevents Harry from beaming everyone else up.

And then we see a post-coital Janeway. God, first Neelix, now Janeway. Don't they know what abuse they're putting me through?

Back to the bar - Tom is going from hitting on Torres, to being more empathetic, which inspires her to open up a bit. Tom even offers to put himself in the Friend Zone, so you know they've screwed with his brain somehow.

Chuckles, Neelix, and the Doctor put together a plan to glue some forehead ridges to Chuckles face, and then have him and Neelix take Neelix's shuttle down to the surface to join the workforce. We actually see Neelix's shuttle, which is fucking enormous and shouldn't fucking fit anywhere on that DAMN SHIP.

Anyway, Tuvok has been successfully avoiding his inoculations, and he's able to finally identify Seven. He mind-melds with her long enough to clue her in to her latent personality before being dragged off as a mental case. That's convenient, though, because it means that Chuckles can take over his job. And Neelix tracks down Tom at the bar, "subtly" trying to trigger his memories. Chuckles shows up and checks in, and when Janeway and Jaffa wander in as well, she tries to invite them to hang out, but Jaffa puts up a cold shoulder, all so that he can ask her if she wants to move in with him.

Holy shit man, you move fast.

Neelix and Chuckles corner Torres in an alley, then kidnap her, but not before she manages to get the attention of the local police force. Neelix and Torres are able to beam out thanks to a transponder Neelix had, but Chuckles is on his own. Good fucking luck, Chuck.

Like two-thirds of this episode was utterly boring filler. Establishing characters that you know are going to be reset next week. Bizarre scenes that focus on the Doctor being jealous of Harry Fucking Kim. And, of course, the romance subplot. I'm going to warn you all right now - this could have been condensed into a single episode if the staff of this show were at all competent, so Part 2 isn't going to be any better. Of all of Voyager's two-part episodes, this is perhaps only surpassed in its incompetence by Unimatrix Zero.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -52/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16

Could be worse. They could be fucking each other.

In a three way with Chuckles.








....I've got a Presidential Suite in Special Hell with my name on it.

You just KNOW someone somewhere already ficced that.

I know, Dicky. I know.

Anna, you damn well know that Chuckles would be worthless in a threesome. He'd be, like, sitting on the edge of the bed, jerking it sadly, his peyote tricorder giving him a harsh buzz until he mutters "akoochemoya" as he brings himself to orgasm 30 minutes before Janeway or Neelix get there.

....yeah.

I'll wave down the hall to ya from my suite, k thnxz

Workforce, Part 2

Chuckles is beating up some cops, and Voyager is running away from some ships guarding the planet. The Doctor burns through another fucking torpedo to disable them by detonating it with a phaser (apparently, they can't be rigged to explode on-demand now).

For some reason, Chuckles heads back to the bar, even though he's been phasered in the shoulder. Janeway apologizes to him for her new man's rudeness, and informs him that they're celebrating, as she's decided to move in with him. That's right, pissing in Chuckles' corn flakes is intrinsic to her fucking DNA. Unsurprisingly, the cops show up to the bar to look for Chuckles, which is what cops do, so he ducks out again. Yes, this entire scene is largely so that we can get a shot of Chuckles looking sad that someone else is boldly going where he's only gone in his masturbatory fantasies.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has landed the ship on a technobabble moon to hide and proclaims it to be "ingenious", which it might have been had The Empire Strikes Back not done it decades earlier. He claims that recovery from her brainwashing will be traumatic, but you know none of this shit will be referenced after this episode.

Back on the planet, some doctors are caring for Tuvok, and one claims he has "dysphoria syndrome." He orders the other to get to work on resequencing his memories. Seven's having memories of her own - of a Borg cube. However, as she discusses it with her supervisor, the head detective shows up to investigate the disappearance of Neelix, Torres, and Chuckles.

Janeway starts moving her garbage into Jaffa's house, and apparently she's a goddamn hoarder. She goes to get even more of it, but finds Chuckles in her apartment. A sight that would strike fear into the heart of anyone. He explains what he's up to, and Janeway is totally OK with his bullshit-sounding excuse. I cannot think of a single woman who'd buy the excuse of, "Oh, she forgot who she was, so we kidnapped her to go remind her."

On Voyager, Neelix busies himself with re-introducing Torres to her life married to a man-child. And, seriously guys, you put a Sword-of-Kahless style Bat-leth in the room three damn episodes ago, and you've already fucked it up by reverting back to a standard one? What, did Ira Steven Behr let you borrow it, but demanded it back after you added five tons of bullshit Klingon mythology to the canon?

Janeway wandered off to her job to get a device that will heal Chuckle's wound, and this keys Seven into doing a search of the personnel records Tuvok, some random worker bee, somehow was able to access.

Voyager calls Chuckles, and he reveals to Janeway that she's the captain. And that is somehow the final straw for Janeway, but she decides he's telling the truth once he wipes out plastic surgery with a dermal regenerator and somehow miraculously restores his fucking tattoo. Janeway reveals this all to Jaffa, who immediately makes it all about their relationship. And then the cops burst into Janeway's apartment and phaser the fuck out of Chuckles.

The detective starts interrogating him, but the doctors show up to steal him away. The detective is furious about it, but is outranked, leading Chuckles to riddle off the truth as he's being carted off.

Back on the ship, Neelix inflicts his cooking on Torres. And, for a brief, wonderful moment, Roxann Dawson gets to act - it's not the typical gruff-B'elanna-Klingon, and it seems so much more natural. Guess you can swing for the fences when you direct the episode. Also, the Doctor tries to convince Harry to program a new EMH so that he can play captain indefinitely, in a scene that is utterly useless.

Chuckles gives them a call, and tells them all is going according to plan. However, it's medically coerced by the senior doctor, and the manager of the plant the crew works at, to lead Voyager into a trap. The young doctor shows up and suggests that since there are so many "dysphoria syndrome" patients are showing up, maybe they should start an investigation of the plant. The senior doctor scares him off of it, though.

Seven's busy chatting with the detective, revealing that 137 people, mostly human, started working at the plant the same day she did, and all of them went through quarantine and the lab that handles "dysphoria syndrome." The detective reveals that he's been shitcanned due to his investigation, and she lets Tom in on the secret as well.

Since the detective can't go to to the hospital to investigate, Seven goes to do some reconnaissance. The young doctor sees her - conveniently - and he realizes she too had "dysphoria syndrome." She convinces him to go get the senior doctor, and takes advantage of his absence to start looking through files.

The detective shows up to talk to Janeway, and it's revealed that Jaffa, not Janeway, sicced the cops on Chuckles. And Janeway is totally cool with that. He convinces them to tell him everything about what Chuckles had told her.

Back at the hospital, the young doctor finds that Seven's run off, and that she's accessed the files of 64 patients with "dysphoria syndrome", all of them in a batch, and all of them destined for the same plant. He points that out to the senior doctor, and finally accuses him of modifying people's memories to force them into servitude at the plant. The doctor doesn't deny it, but claims that a labor shortage is more of a health threat than anything else, and that they're being "helped" into new roles at the plant. He also points out that the higher ups from planetary healthcare and security are in on it, so there's nothing the young doctor can do.

At the bar, Seven explains to everyone what's going on. Janeway says she's going to go try to contact Voyager, and Jaffa volunteers to help. How noble, from a guy who's acted like a dick for most of the two episodes. The detective heads to the hospital with Seven, and holds a gun to the senior doctor. Tom...does stuff? I guess? Maybe he's cleaning the bar.

Janeway calls up Voyager, and they discover that Chuckles didn't accomplish any damn thing. They beg her to deactivate the shields, but they're cornered by plant security. So, Janeway triggers a simulated overload in the plant systems.

With he ship under attack, Harry jettisons three escape pods, which the attacking ships immediately catch in a tractor beam. The Doctor then remotely detonates them. I'd assume that Harry had beamed some torpedoes into them, but transporters are down, per Torres, so I guess escape pods have self destruct systems. What possible purpose could that have?

The overload finally shuts down power to the plant and the planet's shield grid, and Torres just beams over a hundred people aboard simultaneously. And as everyone recovers from memory restoration, Neelix, Harry, and the Doctor help expose the scheme to officials who aren't corrupt, and the detective reveals he's found thousands who are in similar conditions.

Meanwhile, Jaffa is invited up to the ship, where Janeway is back-to-business, claiming that she'd invite him along for the ride, but they'd have to stop fucking. However, he's been made the new plant manager, so he's got that going for him. They part with a chaste hug, and Janeway starts back towards Earth.

Ugh. I've been dreading reviewing these, just because of how boring they were. The problem with midseason two part episodes, especially on Star Trek, especially on Voyager, is that if there's no real danger to the status quo, there's no real conflict. You know nothing's going to change, so it's incredibly hard to stay invested. So, as a trade off, typically, you have to amp up your game. And they simply failed to do that. I'd have preferred to have seen a single simplified episode, even though that'd be bound to have comparisons to some similar ones from TNG, over this drawn-out, monotonous slog.

The worst part is that it isn't even particularly well thought out. Where was Icheb? How about Naomi - how does such a work-oriented society deal with latchkey kids? Nobody who wasn't on the dole noticed a hundred new workers, all from the same species that they've never seen before, show up to the same plant all at once? Or in the dozens of times this has happened before? And all of this is driven by the plot device of magical memory engrams. I'll give that the second part of this train wreck was actually more tightly-paced and better-written than the first, which is a rarity in Trek, but it wasn't enough to elevate it to anything of value.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -53/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 16
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 16

Holy balls, just reading about this episode was tedious.

That one where Seven bangs Holo-Chuckles is next, right? There should be some comedy gold in that!

I literally have a note that says "Seven HOLOFUCKS Chuckles."