Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Has anyone noticed that Memory Alpha's commentaries (background info) on episodes is minimal in most VOY eps, but in almost all DS9 eps is quite expansive?

It looks like DS9's pulls a lot from the DS9 Companion (a great book IMO). There's one for VOY too I hear, but apparently no one bothered to read it.

 

Sacred Ground
Remember back in Season One when I mistook an episode for a different one, believing it to be one where Janeway embarks on a spiritual journey to save a crew member? Remember how I said it was awful?

My memory was correct.

Voyager takes time off on it's lifetime-long journey back home to wander around some alien planet. While the alien is giving them a guided tour of some generic caverns, Kes and Neelix wander away from the group. Then, like a dumbass, Kes tries to walk into this glowing archway, and, surprise, it kicks the shit out of her.

After beaming her back to Voyager, the Doctor reveals that she's basically comatose, and there is no cure that he can find for what the pulse from the arch did to her. Janeway flips shit at the aliens because one of her crew members couldn't follow directions, and the aliens basically say, "Yeah, uh, we're sorry about that, but we're from the government, and that arch belongs to some monks, and we agreed a long time ago that we really shouldn't meddle in each other's affairs. We've got no idea, you're boned."

And, of course, the monks won't let them scan the arch or do anything like that, and Janeway is more than happy to respect the wishes of this culture that she will never, ever see again. She sends Neelix down to the planet to look for a solution in their religious literature, mostly to get him out of the Doctor's hair (and to spare the audience from Ethan Phillips basically waving his arms around and whining). He comes back with a single solution - apparently, according to their legend, a king's son once pulled a Kes, and he was able to save him by going through the monk's training himself, and appealing to their spirits that it was his responsibility, both as a father and king.

Janeway pitches the idea of this to the government representative, who seems to get a kick out of it. The monks do too, and invite Janeway on down. She beams to the entrance of the caverns and is a royal bitch to a female monk who was trying to repair a light. And then the monk reveals that she will be leading Janeway through her spiritual journey. Janeway seems momentarily embarrassed, but not at all mortified like she should be for being an utter asshole to someone she didn't even know.

Christ, the rest of this is just a mess. Here's a basic rundown. Janeway is sent off to chill with three old people in a waiting room, and they claim to have been waiting there for as long as they could remember. Janeway tells them to fuck off and leaves, and 'continues her journey.' This involves shit like holding a rock for hours on end until she sees it glow, climbing a cliff wall, and shoving her hand in a basket with a snake/angry gerbil to be bitten. All the while the monk is grinning and basically being about as clear as a broken Magic 8-Ball.

Believing her journey to be complete, Janeway goes back up to the ship, and the Doctor examines the toxins from the bite and synthesizes a cure. However, it doesn't quite seem to work, so Janeway storms back off to the planet to get some answers, only to partake in more spiritual bullshit.

She ends up talking to the old people again, actually listening to them, and they basically tell her to just walk through the arch with Kes while believing without a doubt that the spirits would protect them. Janeway thinks this is a splendid idea, and has her beamed down. Oh, yeah, and Chakotay has been wandering around sickbay like a lost puppy the entire time, so he joins Kes, as does Neelix, because we haven't been gifted enough with his presence yet this episode. They try to convince her that it's suicide, and Chakotay decides he doesn't give a fuck and scans the arch. He informs her of how much current or whatever she'll get hit with, but she walks through anyway, and emerges unharmed.

The Doctor later explains that had they been permitted to take the readings, he would have known that all it would take is another jolt combined with the gerbil venom, and she would have been fine. Thanks a bundle. Janeway comes away feeling a little more spiritual, having abandoned her scientific mind.

Fuck it, this episode blew.
Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

 

Huh. I don't think I've seen this one. Or I've repressed it.

 

Future's End, Part I
We open with some fucking hippy beating on pots and pans next to a campfire in the 60s. However, a ship of some sort soon crash lands nearby, causing him to exclaim "Far out!"

Back in the 24th century, Voyager encounters a spacial rift, and from it emerges a tiny ship. Harry discovers that it's from the Federation, but it doesn't respond to hails. Instead, it shoots them with some sort of uberPhaser that causes the ship to start losing its molecular coherency. Harry puts a stop to this with a technobabble pulse from the deflector, and only then does the ship hail Voyager. The pilot is Captain Braxton of the Timeship Aeon, and he's here to destroy Voyager to prevent it from ending up in some future mishap that essentially obliterates the Sol system in the 29th century, and that they need to discontinue the pulse so he can finish his work. Janeway tells him to fuck off, but the pulse ends up destabilizing the rift. Both the Aeon and Voyager are pulled into the rift.

When the crew regains consciousness, they discover that they are basically at Earth's doorstep. Janeway eagerly orders a hail to Starfleet, but there is no response on any standard channel. What Tuvok does pick up, though, are thousands of radio and TV broadcasts. After collating with the astrometric data, Harry realizes that Voyager's at the right place, but the wrong time - 1996.

So, naturally, they park the ship and beam down, which somehow takes down the transporters, weapons, and shields. Fucking cheapass ship. Janeway decides to leave Harry in charge on the bridge - I guess it must be one of her crazy days again. After beaming down to an LA boardwalk, Tuvok remarks that they probably could have beamed down in their uniforms and nobody would have noticed (something of a nice allusion to STIV). Tom and Tuvok go off to check for a subspace signal on the beach, while Janeway and Chakotay look for it on the boardwalk. Tuvok seems to be skittish of the sun, which is odd, y'know, since he's a Vulcan.

Soon, however, a woman named Rain Robinson discovers Voyager in orbit. She notifies a man named Henry Starling, who runs a company called Chronowerx that seems to have supplanted Apple and Microsoft. He tells her that it's nothing to worry about, and that he'll have a team investigate further. She doesn't listen, though, and sends up a standard SETI greeting. When Harry receives it, he basically has this look of, "Oh fuck, that figures" on his face, and has to tell the only person on Voyager more worthless than he is to not reply to it. That's a real brain trust you've got command over there, Harry.

Harry, of course, tells Janeway (and when her commbadge chirps, everyone around her checks their cell phones), and she has Tom and Tuvok investigate the signal, which originated from the Griffith Observatory. Tom and Tuvok steal a truck and get up there, setting up Rain Robinson's computer to be wiped to destroy evidence of Voyager's presence. She catches them in the act, and Tom flubs his way through 20th century pop culture and slang into her heart. They beat a hasty retreat, though, and she chases after them, demanding to know what they did to her computer.

And then a suit pops up and phasers the fuck out of Tom and Tuvok's stolen truck. Tuvok gets in a firefight with the guy, while Tom and Rain run off to get in her van. Tuvok manages to disarm the suit and hops in the van, putting back on his skull-cap that was hiding his ears.

Meanwhile, Janeway and Chakotay trace the subspace signal to a homeless man, who turns out to be Captain Braxton. He explains that he beamed off of his shuttle, which crashed thirty years previous, but that Henry Starling found it first, exploiting the technology aboard to start the microprocessor revolution.

Janeway and Chakotay head over to Chronowerx to investigate, and use the tricorder to hack into his computer. However, this only alerts him to their presence, and he arrives to find them uploading his database to Voyager. He threatens Janeway, and Harry overhears this on the comm, so he has the ship fly into low orbit where emergency transporters can pick them up and beams them out.

However, Sterling manages to tap into Voyager's comm feed and starts stealing their database, and manages to completely swipe the Doctor, whom he materializes in his office. Meanwhile, Neelix and Kes report that news media has picked up on an amateur video taken of Voyager flying through the night sky. And, of course, Tom and Tuvok are still stuck on Earth, cruising around in a beat up van with an overly-curious astronomer.

Overall, I think this is the first episode that you can tell that everyone involved was having fun for a change. You've also got Ed Begley Jr. and Sarah Silverman in the guest cast, and for once, the writing lets them shine, in addition to handily sidelining Neelix, Kes, Harry, and the Doctor due to their irrelevancy to the first part's plot. The only groanworthy point was when Neelix and Kes were discussing television programs with Harry. He exclaimed that he couldn't imagine not being part of the action, and Kes basically tells him that there's something very satisfying about simply being along for the ride when it comes to the plot and characters of non-interactive fiction. Way to be meta, Voyager.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

 

Is this the episode where Tom calls Tuvok a 'freakasaurus'?

 

That's Part II. I found it amusing in the way listening to old people try to use slang is amusing.

 

Me neither. Most of these reviews bring back memories but I'm drawing a blank on Sacred Ground.

 

An interesting tid-bit I didn't know...

Captain Braxton was D-Day in Animal House.

 

Future's End, Part II
When we last left our 'heroes', the crew of Voyager was stuck on a half-working starship with Tom and Tuvok being paraded around LA by a comedienne who would later become famous by looking sweet and saying vile things.

Sterling, on the other hand, is prepping the Aeon for a trip back to the 29th century. His plan? Pull a Rasmussen and grab some new technology, then shuffle on back to the 20th century and reverse-engineer it and sell it to a public lusting for higher-quality GeoCities web pages. The issue? Sterling doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, and Braxton is convinced that he will actually end up causing the explosion that takes out the Sol system.

Tom, Tuvok, and Rain head back to the observatory and use its equipment to contact the ship (only after Tom tries and fails to convert Rain's van's radio, but succeeds in shamelessly flirting with her). The plan? Use a shuttle, piloted by Chakotay and Torres, to act as a relay between the ship and the surface to beam Sterling to Voyager. However, they'll need to know Sterling's coordinates, so they'll have to bring him to a known location.

Rain calls Sterling and begs him to come rescue her (and fuck, if Sarah Silverman called me and begged me to rescue her, I would do so, no questions asked). Sterling hesitantly agrees, but brings the Doctor along as collateral. While the Doctor quips that he's stuck to holographic environments, Sterling slaps on another bit of Aeon technology - a mobile holoemitter.

After arriving, Sterling insists that Rain get in his car, rather than him coming to her as planned. Rain gets in, but as Sterling tells the driver to get the hell out of there, the Doctor creates a distraction by starting a fight with the driver, telling Rain to GTFO. Tuvok uses this extra time to calculate the new coordinates, and transmits them to the shuttle. Sterling starts using a 29th century tricorder of sorts to try to disrupt the beam, but Torres eventually compensates. The Doctor succeeds in knocking the driver out, impressed with his abilities. He then greets a stunned Tuvok and Tom, and is immediately insulted by Rain as being, essentially, a leisure-suit wearing weirdo. Which is mostly true.

As Chakotay and Torres are en route to retrieve Tom and Tuvok, Sterling's goon manages to make it back to headquarters, taking down the shuttle and beaming Sterling back from Voyager. Tuvok and the Doctor go to help Chakotay and Torres, and Tom and Rain go to stop Sterling.

Chakotay and Torres wake up to a very unfriendly sort of people. A group of racist anti-government militia members have come across an "indian" and someone with a weird forehead, and their strange aircraft. They've decided the government has come to get them, so they break out the heavy ammunition. However, when Tuvok and the Doctor arrive, they are very handily taken out - the Doctor, after all, can make himself impervious to bullets. Tuvok, Chakotay, and Torres fix the shuttle, and go off to help Tom and Rain.

Tom and Rain are, of course, flirting with each other while chasing after a semi with a cargo matching the Aeon. Tom phasers out a tire, but that doesn't stop the truck, that ends up turning around and heading straight towards Rain's van. Tom and Rain jump out to safety. However, just in the nick of time, the shuttle arrives and phasers the truck, obliterating it. Keep in mind that they just killed Sterling's lackey, despite Tom and Rain being safely out of the vehicle. There was definitely no Aeon in it, though. Tom kisses Rain goodbye, and departs in the shuttle.

Back at Chronowerx headquarters, Sterling blasts off in the Aeon, forcibly exiting the building with it. He heads up to space and starts creating a rift that will take him to the 29th century. With the shuttle safely on board, Voyager pursues. Harry's got the photon torpedo guidance system online, but the launchers are still offline. Janeway goes, accompanied by the newly mobile Doctor, to manually launch one. As Sterling gets closer and closer to the rift, Janeway fires the torpedo, getting burned in the process. The torpedo connects and destroys the Aeon and the rift.

At first, the crew is concerned about being able to open the rift. But then, another rift opens, and the Aeon appears, piloted by Braxton. He doesn't remember the Voyager crew, but was sent back to retrieve them and deposit them back in the Delta Quadrant. Janeway asks if he could leave them at that point in space, but advance their point in time, but Braxton slaps the Temporal Prime Directive in her face and kicks her back to the ass-end of the galaxy. That medicine must taste mighty delicious, I'm sure.

Overall, a remarkably strong second part for any Trek two-parter. It was pretty much action the entire time, with only one terribly boring moment between Torres and Chakotay in the shuttle. Yay, Chakotay learned how to fly shuttles. Everyone else can do it, fuck, Kes knows how to fly a shuttle, thanks to Tom's aborted pickup attempt.

What I think I liked most about it is that it didn't really attempt to answer to all the various temporal paradoxes and such that stemmed from this episode. In the words of Janeway, that just gives viewers "a headache." I'm sure if this were TNG, we'd get some sort of explanation, but here, they just rolled with it and it worked pretty well.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: 21/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

 

How do you figure this counts as one?

Also, most of the way through part I, when Janeway is trying to break into Starling's computer, there's a nice homage to TOS, "It's like stone knives and bear skins", a la Spock's "I am trying to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bear skins" from "City on the Edge of Forever".

 

Captain Braxton in "Relativity" is Bruce McGill (D-Day), but the guy in "Future's End" is someone else. I seem to recall in "Relativity" that there were multiple Captain Braxton's running around the timeline that needed to be reintegrated.

 

Well, they were in Earth orbit.

It might have been the wrong century, but time travelling in Trek is ridiculously easy. A quick slingshot around the sun, and they're back in time for lunch.

 

Future's End is where we all fell in love with Sarah Silverman, before we knew she was a disgusting troll.

 

That kinda makes me love her more.

 

I found this interesting:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Jennifer_Lien

It looks like VOY made the right choice at first...then People Magazine, like the shitrag that it is, fucked it all up.

Still, Lien made the right choice in walking away from this trainwreck.

 

Edited for Obvious Truth

 

The man ain't butt face ugly but one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World? Seriously?

And even still they should have shot him out a torpedo tube.

Think of the character interaction between Kes and Seven. Not to mention the slash fiction that would follow in its wake.

 

There'd have been too much estrogen on that Starship.

 

Warlord
Apparently having bored of a bar in a city that happily sells brass knuckles in storefront windows, Tom and Harry join Neelix in a new holodeck, based on a Talaxian resort. But Tom and Harry are bored, and frankly creeped out by Neelix moaning in ecstasy while he's getting a foot massage. So Tom adds a little more atomosphere and Harry imports some blondes from his "volleyball program" - yeah, a likely story, better be paying the jizzmopper well, Harry - and then it's a real party. Neelix grudgingly agrees to the improvements, and then dances with the chicks while Tom and Harry are called to the bridge.

Voyager has happened upon an exploding ship just in time to save its occupants. Kes rushes over to the most injured man, who grabs her as he dies - the Doctor reveals that there's nothing he can do, much to the chagrin of the man's wife.

The living survivors, however, are thankful for Voyager's assistance and Janeway happily provides the Starfleet Taxi Service back to their planet. While on the way, Kes gets closer to the dead man's wife, explaining that she needs a friend now.

However, after Neelix calls Kes away from her leading a guided tour of the ship to the aliens, she flips out on him, claiming that he's stifling her and trying to prevent her from making new friends so that she'll devote her time to him. She then breaks up with a stunned Neelix.

Voyager then arrives at the planet, and a proxy for the leader of the government beams aboard, welcomed by his fellow aliens, Kes, and Janeway. However, Kes then pulls out a phaser and murders the alien proxy, and then one of the aliens kills the Yellow Shirted Ensign manning the transporter. Janeway gets knocked out as the aliens and Kes lock out the transporter room from interference from the bridge.

They beam a shuttle into space (fuck, can Starfleet build a transporter so powerful that it could beam itself?), then beam onto it and make an escape, disguising their warp trail.

The son of the leader of the government beams aboard to discuss the situation with the crew. It turns out that he believes the man who died in sickbay was actually Tieran, a despotic ruler the aliens had overthrown two centuries previous. He had figured out a way to transfer himself from body to body, cheating death. Voyager finds the trail of the shuttle and tracks it down.

But they are too late. Kes and the aliens storm the leader's chambers, and Kes murders him with a point-blank shot to the chest, while he was sitting right next to his other son. She takes the "crown", some creepy looking choker thing, and basically sets about to restore her fallen empire.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has figured out a solution. Tieran accomplished his 'reincarnation' by He's rigged a doohickey to basically suck Tieran's consciousness out of Kes' brain, but it has to be applied directly to her. Tuvok volunteers for this job, believing that he can mask his thoughts to the newly psychic Tieran.

Tieran, meanwhile, is basically hitting on his...her...uh, yeah, wife, and guaranteeing her a place in his empire, but she is unsure. The wife and Kes are about to share a lesbian kiss that would have set Baba's heart on fire, but the old leader's son is brought before her, and she basically seduces him with promises of power. Fucking Voyager, always cops out on the lesbians.

Kes then realizes that Tuvok is present. She rushes around the room, lifting the veils on the guards' faces while ranting about his typical Vulcan arrogance. Amusingly, he comes around a corner and basically just slaps her in the face with the Doctor's doohickey (well, fuck, that sounds dirty), but she tears it off and Tuvok is captured.

Kes goes to interrogate him for answers about Voyager's plans, but Tuvok resists her mental persuasion techniques. She then switches to reading his suppressed emotions and playing on what she interprets to be a hidden desire for her, kissing him. He turns this around on her and forces a mind meld, but she breaks it soon after the real Kes tells Tuvok that she's fighting Tieren's influence, telekinetically throwing him across the room.

Tuvok being Voyager's last hope, they agree to help the ruler's son storm the chambers and retake them by force. Voyager and the son's fleet mount an offensive (offscreen, of course ), but Kes is unconcerned. First, she kills a guy by pulling a Hands of Blue on him for suggesting that Tieren leave the body that is giving him trouble. She then has a dream in which Kes directly confronts Tieren, telling him that she'd never stop fighting him. Finally, during a banquet in which Kes announces her engagement to the leader's other son, Voyager finally attacks. Kes waves it off, and forces her compatriots to dine, even though the wife is very distraught over being displaced.

As Voyager breaks through Kes' defenses, she's furious. Soon, the valiant senior staff storm the chambers and either stun or kill basically everyone. Neelix confronts Kes, and tells Tieren to lave her. He refuses, so Neelix phasers her and slaps the device on Kes' forehead, pushing the second son away from her as he catches her. However, she tells him that Tieran transferred in those few moments, and takes the device off her forehead. She spits "It's time for you to move on" as she puts the device on the second son's forehead, killing Tieren forever.

After returning to Voyager, Kes and Tuvok meditate, but Kes states that she will be unsure how to handle her interactions with the crew after hurting so many people.

Overall, I was pretty impressed by this episode. Why? Not because of the writing, it was kind of hokey, and not because of the direction, it was kind of static, but because of Jennifer Lien - she did an excellent job playing the bitter, angry, seductive Tieren.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 21/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

 

There's no "dead crewmen" count?


That just occurred to me.

 

Too hard to judge given the first episode, IMHO.

 

Yeah, doing it from Caretaker would be pretty hard.

I'm pretty sure they gave a number in 37's, though.

 

Yeah, that was a good one... mostly cuz of Jennifer Lien. I always enjoyed the character actually. She was probably the only one on Voyager who didn't annoy the fuck out of me at some point or another.

I can't imagine why they kicked her out and left utter bores like Chakotay, Neelix, and Kim around. Maybe she should have showed her tits more.

 

Excluding those in the premier, I think I could only remember somewhere in the ballpark of six to ten officers being offed in the entire series. For a ship out in space that flew thought Kazon and Borg territory of all places, that count shoudl have been a hell of a lot higher.

Enterprise was guilty of this, too, until season three, where a fourth of the crew was gutted in one attack, and people in Star Trek had to (GASP) survive and rough it out!

 

I just realized something about False Profits. Voyager has come up with a way to stabilize an unstable wormhole, something that obviously wasn't possible in TNG. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if they had just let the Ferengi keep exploiting the planet for another couple weeks while Voyager got home, isolated the technology, put it on an unmanned station to leave at the DQ end of the wormhole, and then had a fully manned starship with an extraction team come back and pick up the Ferengi. Hell, it should have been Picard's responsibility to deal with.

Janeway screwed up here, big time.

 

Yup. I spend most of that episode thinking "WHO FUCKING CARES? GO THROUGH THE WORMHOLE NOW, IDIOTS!!!!! NOW!!!!!!"


Once again, they didn't listen to me.

 

for some reason, I'm reminded of that Simpsons episode where Homer accidentally blows up the town church with a rocket (!) and Marge cries "This is the worst thing you've ever done."

The Homer replies non-chalantly "you say that so much, it's lost all meaning."

That's kind of the best way to sum up Janeway. I mean, even Jonathan Archer the boy scout eventually learned there was a time and place to moralized and the middle or a war wasn't it.

Speaking of, is there enough enough interest in Enterprise for me to jump on the bandwagon and do my own reviews? It was the Trek that got me into the show and indirectly to this board, much like Voyager did with Kyle, and not all of it was failtastic

Plus, it'd be nice to talk about this show with folks that won't look through it with the shipper glasses on (I promise to keep the reviews devoid of fandom commentary...mostly. I can't make any promises about the finale though )

 

The Q and the Grey
Never before have I seen an episode of Voyager, hell, of Star Trek, go from being enjoyable to being absolutely terrible so abruptly.

Voyager's come across a star going supernova, and they mention that they're only the third Stafleet crew to encounter such an event (and they were right - Kirk and Picard's crews both witnessed one too), but they hold the record for being the closest.

Janeway then heads back to her quarters, and she opens the door to discover a lush, satin-clad bed in dulcet red. Q has arrived. She calls for security, but he disables it, stating that he doesn't want anyone interrupting their night. John de Lancie hams it up here as he tries to seduce Janeway into bed, but she won't have any of it, just telling him to GTFO. Q, of course, interprets this as playing hard to get.

The next morning, Janeway and Chakotay discuss it, and just like when Chakotay hassled Torres about her wet dreams, he wants all the juicy details here as well. Goddammit, man, has Starfleet outlawed porn as well, or are you just afraid of infecting the computer with Delta Quadrant spyware? HOT OCAMPAN ON KAZON ACTION. THESE HOT GIRLS WANT TO ASSIMILATE YOU INTO THEIR COLLECTIVE - THEIR ORGY COLLECTIVE! Q shows up and calls him Chuckles - I had forgotten that the pejorative had actually come from the show itself, and tries to impress Janeway with an even more extravagant tattoo, apparently believing that she has the hots for Chakotay. Dream on, Chuckles is the most sexually frustrated crew member on Voyager. Hell, somehow even Harry gets more play. And Tom's the one that actually banged her, even if it was in lizard-form.

Speaking of Tom, he and Harry are on the holodeck at Neelix's resort. Q shows up and tries to get them to spill the beans on what'll get him in Janeway's good graces. Tom and Harry basically tell him to fuck off. However, because Neelix is as dumb as a post, he is more than happy to talk to Q. He gets blustery and such, but he basically tells her that all she wants is to be treated with respect and not lied to (this is especially hilarious given an upcoming episode, but more on that later).

So Q tries a new plan. He conjures up a puppy, and while Janeway is more than happy to cuddle it, she tells him that it won't convince her. He informs her that it wasn't meant to, and that he has something to discuss. He's grown tired of all that the universe currently has to offer, so he wants to knock Janeway up and experience fatherhood. And rather than realizing that this is the only being in the universe who believes that she'd be a fit mother, Janeway turns him down. And just then, a female Q shows up and refers to Janeway as a dog. Quite the entrance.

Q and Lady-Q have a battle of wits for a little bit on the Bridge, while more stars are going supernova. Janeway tells them to shut the fuck up and get Voyager out of there, so instead, Q spirits her off to the Continuum while the ship gets knocked around by the supernovas, somehow stripping Lady-Q of her powers.

And now the episode is utter shit.

Turns out the Q are in the midst of a civil war over Quinn's death, and so the version of the Continuum presented to Janeway is the South in the Civil War. However, amusingly, Voyager even manages to fuck up the Civil War, an actual historic event. Q is part of the faction dissatisfied with the status quo, but yet, he's in distinctly Union garb, and is still trying to hit on Janeway, dressed as a Southern Belle, in a Southern mansion, implied to be his own. What the fuck? He manages to get hit with a bullet and bleeds, and he informs Janeway that omnipotent races come up with creative ways to kill each other. Ooh, what biting social commentary. He refuses to submit to the advancing Q-Confederate forces, though, but Janeway rescues him and takes him to a Union camp.

There, he explains that he hoped to end the war by introducing some human DNA into the continuum. MAGIC DNA TIME! I sure am glad that the Q and humans have compatible DNA. You'd think that an omnipotent race would be radically different, but no, I guess Q sperm would just have to flip their tales and human ova would eagerly shed their protective coating.

Meanwhile, back on Voyager, Lady-Q has come up with an idea to take the entire ship into the Continuum without using any powers. This idea is to fly into one of the supernova with some shield modifications. Oh, do fuck off. Anyway, they proceed to do so.

Meanwhile, Janeway goes to surrender, basically telling Q that he's being ridiculous, but the General-Q of the Q-Confederate forces is not interested, preferring to execute Q as an example to the rest of the Union forces. Yeah, subtle commentary on the Confederates, eh? I mean, I don't buy into the whole flag-waving Confederate patriotism BS that flies in the Red Room pretty frequently, but this is just stereotypical nonsense.

They go to execute both Janeway and Q, tying them to posts, and the camera zooms on their faces 'dramatically', but more like if someone let George Lucas behind the camera. And then the Voyager senior staff (and probably that one extra that's in every damn episode, but I can never remember his name) storm the countryside in Q-Union blue, forcing the Q-Confederate forces to surrender. Janeway suggests that the same effect of novelty could be had by Q and Lady-Q mating, and they do, touching fingers and then talking about how good the other was. Janeway exclaims "That's it?!?!" Yeah Janeway, way to go, all you would have had to do was tap fingers with Q and your ship could be back home. Q tells her that she's had her shot, but he's no longer interested.

Back on Voyager, having resumed it's trip to the Alpha Quadrant, Janeway goes into her ready room, where Q shows off his newborn baby, which is wearing a Starfleet captain's uniform. He basically tells her that she'll be babysitting at some point and leaves.

Uhg. I think you know what's coming.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 21/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

 

Macrocosm
Janeway fucks up trade negotiations with the Tak Tak, a race with superstitious gestures and body movement, when she puts her hands on her hips. Neelix saves her ass, though, and manages to at least salvage relations, if not the negotiations. But when they get back to Voyager, the ship is adrift, and some spacial interference prevents them from getting a count of how many people are aboard.

Janeway and Neelix poke around, following a comm signal they've located. They end up Ensign Wildman's quarters, and she had left Neelix's Good Morning Voyager program running. Yes, of all the continuity to run with, they go with Neelix's morning show. Neither Wildman nor her baby is to be found, though, so they decide to try to get up to the Bridge via the Jeffries Tubes. However, they spot a shadow down a corridor, and go to investigate. They discover that whatever it was, it spat an escape hole alien-style through a transporter pad.

However, on the way, they catch a glimpse of the creature and it slimes Neelix. He starts getting wheezy and whiny, but Janeway keeps dragging him along, until eventually, he is snatched away in a Jeffries tube. Shedding no tears for the possible death of Neelix, she makes it to the Bridge. Just after she sends a distress call, she gets bitten by something, and it starts to make her act like Neelix, so she naturally goes to Sickbay.

The Doctor explains that while she and Neelix were off the ship, Voyager went to answer a distress call from an alien mining colony, complaining of some sort of viral infection. The Doctor beams down with his mobile emitter, stating that he's the only one of the crew in absolutely no danger of infection. While there, he discovers that the viruses have grown to be the size of insects, sprouting forth from their hosts. He also notes that they seem to be attracted to his holomatrix, but Chuckles insists on his beaming back aboard, sans any samples.

Nonetheless, a few make it into the matter stream, but rather than being infused with the Doctor's emitter and creating a new TechnoFly, they are shunted off to the biofilter holding tank. Of course, they promptly escape and manage to infect the entire crew.

In the meantime, the Doctor has managed to create a cure, but he'll need environmental controls back online to distribute it. Janeway and the Doctor split up, each carrying some of the antiviral, and Janeway goes and gets decked out for combat with a tank top and a FC-style phaser rifle (more on those shortly). The Doctor gets trapped in the shuttle bay after the virii attack his mobile emitter, but Janeway makes it to environmental control and manages to re-establish them. Just as she does so, though, the ship is attacked. The Tak Tak received her distress call, and have decided to purify the ship by destroying it. She convinces them to give her an hour to clear the infection, but the attack has disabled the environmental controls once more.

She devises a new plan, however. She has the Doctor fire up the holodeck and populate it with dozens of characters from Neelix's resort fantasy. The macroviruses then attack these holograms, and Janeway chucks a bomb with the antiviral attached into the holodeck, killing all the viruses onboard.

They retake the ship and get the cure to the Tak Tak, and are on their merry way.

God, this was awful. Anyone who's ever taken an intro to bio course knows that the reason that a 500-foot tall amoeba can't kill us all is because, basically, single-celled organisms can't really get that large because cell membranes simply aren't that strong. Voyager chucks basic science out the window for this awful episode, though. It does give us one of Star Trek's rare non-forehead alien enemies, but it was just so sloppily constructed that it didn't work at all.

Now, about those phaser rifles. Earlier in this thread, someone mentioned that the use of the First Contact rifles on Voyager indicated that they didn't really give a shit about anything, so they stopped watching. I'd argue that there's a reason for that. Ignoring that DS9 switched back and forth between using TNG and FC phaser rilfes after the FC rifles were introduced (and never using the models introduced on Voyager), have you seen the Voyager phaser rifles?

God, they were ugly as fuck. Bulky, awful things that were practically as large as the person wielding them. They seemed exceptionally shoddy, too, seemingly having no heft or weight to them.

The FC rifles, on the other hand, were exceptionally well-designed. From the way that Kate Mulgrew interacts with them in this episode, you can tell they've got a realistic weight associated with them, and that they're a more manageable and higher-quality prop to deal with.

From a technical standpoint, I can't really fault them for fudging it on this one. I'd rather see a FC-style phaser rifle and know that they went that way to ditch the awful VOY-style ones, rather than see the VOY-style ones used just for the sake of continuity.

Oh, yeah, why you call came here:

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 21/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 7

 

An amusing line, but I thought she played it a little over-the-top.

Q: How big can an amoeba that eats entire starships get?
A: Any size it wants!