Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

I thought it was implied that the change to the timeline, ultimately, was that Annorax spent the day with his wife instead of working on the weapon, and thus never finished it.

One thing I was confused about was, though it ultimately probably doesn't make too much of a difference: was the last scene with Annorax 200 years before Voyager's time, or had the timeship been in Voyager's time for 200 years.

Also, why didn't the crew know how to make the temporal shields already? They had the displacement of 1.47 microseconds from Kes, didn't they?

I always figured in was 200 years in the past since when Tom/Chuckles were on the ship their time moved the same as Voyagers. 1 day on the timeship = 1 day on Voyager

But that doesn't really make sense because why would Annorax care about restoring the colony if his wife was going to be 200 years dead anyway ?

So then you think, well, it is a timeship - It can probably travel back 200 years too.

But then why did the crew revolt if they could go back to their families at the push of a button ?

past, otherwise we woulda had to have seen Braxton yet again trying to fix it.

Maybe their families had been erased, or caused to have never existed?

What's clear is that by the logic of the reset button used:

1) destroying the ship resets the time line so that the ship never existed;

2) all things are eventually destroyed;

3) therefore the ship can never exist in any stable time line;

4) therefore reset was inevitable regardless of what Voyager and her crew and Annorax did;

5) and, in any event, there was not even a technobabble basis given for why destruction of the time ship reset the time line.

If they were going to hit the reset button by resetting the the time line then the Voyager writers really had a duty to do so in a way that either made the ingenuity of the Voyager crew critical or made Annorax's redemption critical. The reset should tell us something important about the characters involved, even if the the story being reset is never remembered by those characters. Reset buttons rarely come as such undisguised deus ex machinations as in Year of Hell.

False premises in 1: the destruction of the ship wouldn't necessarily cause an incursion in the temporal core, the thing that was both responsible for the weapon and keeping the ship out of the space-time continuum, which was erased from history. If the ship had simply been blown up, history would not have changed and Voyager would have remained horribly damaged or destroyed. For that matter, if Annorax had succeeded or decided to stop, and simply disassembled the temporal core, there's no reason to thing it would have erased itself.

Also, it might not have been the redemption of Annorax, but it was the ingenuity of Voyager's crew, specifically Tom and Chakotay, and the redemption of the rest of Annorax's crew.

Year of Hell, Part II
When last we saw the intrepid crew of Voyager, they were splitting apart, leaving Voyager with a skeleton crew of the only important people on the ship, sending the rest of the poor bastards off to get picked off one by one by any passing asshole who decides that he doesn't like escape pods.

Voyager's now chilling in a nebula, and Harry and Janeway are busy sealing the ship from the gases of the nebula. Janeway basically gets black lung from it, though, and the Doctor begins to suspect her sanity. Begins? Fuck man, I think Deanna Troi back in the Alpha Quadrant has figured this out already. She orders him to pump her full of tri-ox, and despite his insistence that the treatment is only a stopgap, she keeps on working.

Meanwhile, back on the timeship, Annorax pulls Tom and Chakotay out of their holding cells, has them cleaned up, and invites them to dinner. As they're chowing down, he reveals that they're essentially enjoying the last remnants of a dozen erased civilizations. Despite appearing horrified to hear this, they keep eating. He offers a deal - work with him to reconstruct Voyager's journey, and he'll be able to work around Voyager in the timeline, allowing him to continue his quest to restore the Krenim imperium. Tom protests immediately, but Chakotay is willing to listen more, and Annorax congratulates him after noting that he seems to have a particular grasp of temporal mechanics.

On Voyager, the senior staff meets up for a small meeting and discusses the positive advances they've made that day in the repair of the ship. However, Torres laments that it'll take a month to make the appropriate repairs to the structural integrity field required for real movement in space. Janeway further demonstrates her insanity and decides that they'll just leave tomorrow anyway. Seven objects, but Tuvok pulls a pimp Ray Charles and smacks her with a reminder that the captain is always right.

A couple weeks later, Chakotay is running simulations with Annorax, getting his feet wet with the joy of obliterating history. He's trying to achieve a nonviolent solution to work around Voyager's presence, and suggests eliminating a comet Voyager encountered and made a course correction for that caused them to enter Krenim space in the first place. The temporal simulation executes, but dozens of races disappear - the comet had helped seed the races in the area. Whoops. Annorax explains his history and how a similar mistake caused him to be a temporal Captain Ahab.

Voyager has left the nebula, but a micrometeor storm starts to rock the ship. Harmless space dust is essentially punching through the paper-thin, weakened hull of the ship. Janeway races off to deflector control to put out a fire and get the systems up and running, and does so, but ends up looking like Tuvok after Kes got ambitious with her mental abilities. The Doctor does his best, but she's left scarred. She tries to return to duty, but the Doctor orders rest. After threatening to decompile him if he tried to stop her, she ends up just disobeying his order, as there's no way he could enforce it.

A month later, Janeway and Neelix are scouring the ship for supplies and checking for needed repairs. She finds a pocketwatch Chakotay had replicated for her in yet another attempt to get in her pants, and attaches it to her belt before continuing, explaining the significance to Neelix.

Paris is playing a board game with the Krenim lieutenant, who eventually reveals that everyone he had ever loved had long since died or had been erased by the timeship's incursions. Paris crafts a plan to foment rebellion in the ranks and disable the temporal core of the ship, but Chakotay is not convinced - he believes that Annorax will eventually succeed, and that he is close to a non-violent solution to the problem. However, this belief is soon quashed, as Annorax is struck by inspiration and wipes out another race from existence.

Chakotay confronts him, and reveals that he knows about Kiana Prime. Annorax explains that it was his fault that his wife was dead, and only a complete temporal reversal would atone for his sins. He points to the pyramid-power lock of hair and explains that time is against him, fighting him at every turn from saving the one he loves. Chakotay realizes that he's as crazy as the lady he's been trying to bed for the last four years, but without appropriate genitals, so Chakotay decides to go with Tom's plan.

A month later, Janeway has recruited two alien races to help fight Annorax and his timeship. Janeway decides to split the senior staff amongst the ships and pilot Voyager solo, as this will be Voyager's last stand. Tuvok gives her the Vulcan salute and tells her to live long and prosper. She hugs him goodbye, and he returns it, indicating that he knows he'll never see his friend again.

After another month, the group of vessels finally comes upon Annorax's ship. They activate temporal shields and begin their assault, though Annorax is unconcerned - their weapons will have no effect on the out-of-phase vessel. Chakotay reminds Annorax that Janeway's probably given the temporal shielding to not only the alien ships, but their homeworlds, protecting them from future incursions and potentially preventing Kiana Prime's restoration. He orders multiple incursions against the ships, intending to overwhelm their shields and wipe them from existence. The Krenim lieutenant sends a message to Tom, who tries and fails to bring down the core.

However, the Krenim lieutenant beams Tom and Chakotay to one of the attacking vessels and disables the core. Betrayed, Annorax orders the destruction of the vessels with conventional weaponry. One ship explodes, debris grating across the bow of Voyager. A hole is torn in the bridge, and a forcefield now acts as the viewscreen. Janeway decides on one last bout of insanity, and orders the remaining ships to disable their temporal shields. She then flies the ship directly into the temporal core, and as Voyager crumples into the timeship, the core is obliterated, causing a massive incursion against the timeship itself.

The reset button pressed, Voyager is back at Day One. A Krenim ship advises them to go around their space, and they do so. We then see 200 years previous, as Annorax's wife leads him away from his encompassing work.

This was still a good episode, though it suffers from the Part II Syndrome that plagues a hell of a lot of Trek two-parters. Perhaps most damning was that it is perhaps the ultimate tantalus ever offered by Voyager - a glimpse at how awesome the show could have been, even if extended over the course of a single season. I think that it's one of the more logical reset buttons offered, despite Liet's objections (the ship wasn't merely destroyed, it effectively backfired upon itself), but that doesn't excuse it. It was nice while it lasted, though.

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

Random Thoughts or Justice II: Electric Boogaloo
Voyager's chilling at a planet of telepaths called the Mari, and Janeway is busy fumbling through having to deal with currency since the planet clearly isn't as enlightened as the Federation. Torres is with her, as they're dealing with a merchant for a bit of technology that should help with warp coil repairs. A man bumps into Torres, and she reacts in a typically Klingon manner, but restrains herself.

Meanwhile, Neelix is macking on some chick around the corner, who is practically holding out her cantaloupe and asking him to feel how firm her melons are. They hear a scream and run to look - a man is beating the fuck out of another guy.

The Mari chief of police is called away from her tour of Voyager's security with Tuvok to address the beating. She had just finished commenting on how her planet has virtually no crime, so brigs are unnecessary and, to her mind, inhumane. Tuvok tells her that if all of Starfleet had the control over their emotions that the Mari had, then they undoubtedly wouldn't. Of course, now she's forced to investigate the assault, and requests the full cooperation of the Voyager crew as witnesses.

Part of the Mari's investigation technique involves probing the memories of those being questioned to determine the truthfulness of the claims. After interviewing the crew, the Mari chief realizes that Torres had a violent thought while repressing the urge to beat the shit out of the guy who bumped into her, and she arrests her - violent thoughts lead to violent actions, so violent thought has been outlawed on the Mari homeworld.

Sound ridiculous? That's because it is. This is a rare episode of Voyager that actually makes a damn good point, but I'll get there in a minute. Since the Mari are 'enlightened', they'll basically wipe Torres' memory of the event, which will allow them to tag it and wipe it from anyone who might have accidentally picked it up. Tuvok starts an investigation at Janeway's behest.

Tom, meanwhile, is champing at the bit to rescue Torres. Neelix has other concerns - he really wants to get in the pants of that shopkeep. Previously in the episode, he asked Tom for advice (the usual "Be yourself" line, no surprise there), and said that he hasn't "been with anyone since Kes." I'm calling bullshit - at most, you got to second base with Kes. And I think that's being pretty generous. The shopkeep asks Neelix why he wants her to feel up his whiskers (sensing a fantasy that'd make a Ferengi blush), but agrees. Neelix is about to get lucky! Seven calls him over for some help, but as he walks away, he hears a scream. He rushes over, and an old lady has stabbed the fuck out of Neelix's only hope of getting laid. Now he knows how Chuckles feels.

Oh yeah, and I guess Chakotay's in this episode. Somewhere.

Tuvok's investigation continues, and he questions just how accurate the Mari justice system is. He soon discovers that the trader whom Janeway had bought the equipment from was also a black-market thought dealer, selling violent imagery to the highest bidder. Tuvok tempts him with some of the dark images that float in the Vulcan subconscious, and one of the dealer's henchmen and he knock Tuvok unconscious, kidnapping him. He eventually bargains for his release with some of the most violent images, and locks the dealer in a mind meld, essentially beating the shit out of his brain with images of incomprehensible violence (including, laughably, the Predator aliens encountered in Nemesis).

Overwhelmed by violence of a degree his brain had never experienced, Tuvok easily overpowers him and takes him into custody. However, it's too late - the Mari chief has already started the procedure on Torres. Tuvok shoves the thought dealer in her face and basically flips off the Mari justice system for punishing the possibility of offense rather than the offense itself. Torres cleared, she is released, and Voyager gets the hell away from that crazy planet. The Doctor is able to restore her memories pretty easily, so I guess it wasn't that bad a punishment.

Seven ends up confronting Janeway about the day's events and asking her why she seeks out contact with these new races, when it frequently ends in utter disaster (she phrases it a little more subtly, of course). Janeway gives the Starfleet party line about exploration, totally ignoring that the Federation has made a policy of putting up with absolute nonsense and affording other cultures benefits rarely extended to the Federation itself.

Overall, this was a kind of poorly paced episode, but it did manage to tackle both gun control and the war on drugs in a single go, and did so reasonably effectively. It was one of the better indictments I've seen on the outlaw-everything-dangerous mentality to come out of Trek, and for once, they painted the culture as a bunch of criminals who were secretly vying for the very violent thought they had been denied by law. On Mari, when violent thought is outlawed, only outlaws will have violent thoughts.

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

I still think Year of Hell was alittle to over the top. Although I wanted to see the Voyager crew struggling a little more, I would hate to see a season long Year of Hell. Voyager writers weren't that creative to begin with. A completely wrecked Voyager would have been like tying both hands behind their back.

True yet his obsession was/became to bring back his dead wife. Plus he had long discovered that erasing the enemy (The Rilnar) from existence was a not a sound tactic.

Really that should've be a no-brainer from the get go, everybody knows altering history alters the present in unforeseen ways. Go back in time, squish a bug, return to the present and find a world without pineapples. Wiping out the existence of a genetic ancestor to win a war is beyond idiocy. Much smarter to find a more recent target and narrow the scope to changing only a few minor events.

Of course that gets back to needing the ability to send a message between differing locations on a flexible timeline. Gotta get that Three Pip message through!

I think the episode does imply that yet it doesn't explain why Annorax would do anything differently than he did the first time around.

Yes.

The timeship had been outside of time for centuries, meaning time onboard the ship had stopped yet time outside of the ship was flowing along. The episode took place during the time when Voyager was cruising by.

I suspect the goal was always to exit time, destroy the Rilnar forces and re-enter the original time. No matter how much time it took.

I guess the question is would Annorax EVER have stopped ?

I don't think he would have. Restoring his family may have been his stated goal, but you kind of get the impression that his REAL goal was the complete control of time, to the point of God-hood. I don't think Annorax would have restored his family and then just turned the machine off and walked away. That's probably why ideas of scuttling the timeship never even crossed his mind.

This really is a dumbass idea.

I agree completely that this is the concept present in the episode. But it really makes no fucking sense what so ever. Time in the ship is moving normally, the ship seems to be moving through time normally. So what does this mean besides its a technobabble reason why the crew doesn't age ? The crew absolutely should age since their time in the ship is flowing just like it should.

I couldn't find the answer to this question.

^
Which episode ?

The count appeared in Post 109 at Futures End II as the 7th time that VOY has had an opportunity to go home. We're just curious what the prior six opportunities were.

I notice they haven't had other chances since then!

Uh, the slingshot maneuver to simply go forward a few centuries and end up at 24th century Earth? Someone else answered that one.

That counts for seven failed attempts?

Oh, no, there were others along the way. I mentioned a couple of them. If you go through the Memory Alpha episode listings, it does a pretty good job of detailing them.

Yup. The Barzan wormhole, Q offering to send Voyager back in exchange for a favour, the itty-bitty wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant that went into the past, the female Caretaker....

Mortal Coil
OK, I take it back. Year of Hell wasn't the biggest tantalus in Voyager. It's this episode. The writers go to all the trouble to kill Neelix, and then bring him back. Assholes.

Ensign Wildman asks Neelix to help tuck Naomi in, as lately, she was only going to sleep at a reasonable hour if Neelix was around. He tucks her in and tells her a story of the Great Forest, where all of his family watch over him and make sure he's OK. In short, it's Talaxian heaven.

After this, Neelix, Tom, and Chakotay head out in a shuttle into a nebula to hopefully gather some, uh, nebula, for a new power source for Voyager. However, in the process of doing so, the transporter beam (why the fuck are they using the transporter? Couldn't they reconfigure the bussard collectors for this?) ignites the plasma, and causes an electric shock that hits Neelix. He dies instantly.

Back on the ship, Seven wanders into Sickbay as Janeway tells Chakotay to inform the crew that Neelix is dead, and that they'll be following the Talaxian tradition of a week-long period of mourning. The assholes need to be the center of attention even while dead, I guess. Anyway, Seven does a quick scan and realizes that his neural pathways are undamaged, so she proposes a plan that will use Borg nanoprobes to resurrect Neelix. Nanoprobes were kind of magical when used in Scorpion, but at least it made sense there. We're rapidly approaching microscopic deus ex machinae territory here.

Anyway, the procedure is a success. Yay. Neelix is at first happy to be alive, but then contests that there was no way he could have been dead - he was never in the Great Forest. He goes back to his quarters and prays to this statue we've never seen before of a tree from the Great Forest, and questions why he didn't see his sister Alixia (previously mentioned in Rise) there. His faith faltering, he clings to a Talaxian celebration he had planned.

Of course, life goes on for the rest of the Voyager crew. Tuvok and Seven discuss mortality, and Seven reveals that she is relatively unconcerned with death, as who she was will live on forever in the Collective. Tuvok points out that now, severed from the Collective, she's an individual, and everything she does will only matter to those around her. Tuvok can be a fucking dick sometimes, but he makes a good point.

Tom and Torres (sporting Pregnancy Coat) investigate the accident, and Neelix goes to help Chakotay in a holodeck recreation. As the hololighting strikes holoNeelix, Neelix pauses the program and reveals to Chakotay that he saw nothing when he died - no Great Forest, nothing - he simply ceased to be. Chuckles, of course, rambles about some Native American horseshit for a bit, but Neelix is unconsolable - how would a guy who chants to a rock and a mystical peyote tricorder really understand.

Later, at the party Neelix throws for the festival, Tuvok gives a salutatory speech, indicating that really, he likes the guy, just in a Vulcan way. Neelix bids everyone to enjoy the party, but Ensign Wildman shows up and asks him to play daddy again. He does so, and struggles his way through retelling the story Naomi requested of the Great Forest.

Neelix has finally had about as much as he can bear, and asks Chakotay for help. He hooks him up with the peyote tricorder, and Neelix goes on a spirit quest. In it, he travels to the Great Forest, and encounters his sister. She mocks him for his beliefs, and suddenly bursts into cinders - obviously, the Metreon Cascade from Jetrel. He then finds himself dead on a slab, and all the convenient senior staff come to again mock him for his beliefs.

Neelix finally wakes up, shaken, but reveals nothing to Chakotay. Instead, he apologizes to Seven for yelling at her for bringing him back from death, and records a log entry to Tuvok thanking him for being his friend. He then heads to the transporter room, locks out Bridge control, and starts trying to beam himself into the nebula.

And they stop him.

Chakotay pleads with him that no matter what he saw on his vision quest, that was just a reflection of his state of mind, and that nothing he experienced so far could really prove the existence or nonexistence of the Great Forest. But what finally gets Neelix to stay is when Wildman wanders in and asks him to come put Naomi to bed once more - no matter how he feels, people on the ship inexplicably need him.

He goes and tucks Naomi in, again telling her stories of the Great Forest.

So, here's the weird thing. I give this episode some shit because it's a Neelix episode, but it really isn't that bad. In fact, it's kind of good. It makes use of a remarkable amount of backstory, from Neelix's pre-Voyager experiences to the recurring characters of the Wildmans, it actually deals with the dark subject of suicide (perhaps something we wouldn't blink at on DS9, but definitely a heady topic for Voyager), it's one of the rare instances Voyager ever dealt with religion, and Ethan Phillips does a pretty good job of playing it absolutely straight. You don't mind him getting a lot of screen time in this one. Frankly, I think it's because he isn't spending the entire episode acting like he's high on nitrous oxide.

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

"Tuvok can be a fucking dick sometimes, but he makes a good point."

I think Tuvok was the only one on the ship with a brain.

Message in a Bottle
Well, per usual, Torres is on a tear about Seven (made doubly amusing because of the Pregnancy Coat), but Chakotay tells her to fuck off and act like an adult. Now, I'm sure he's going to go off to his quarters to jack it while staring at Janeway's personnel record.

Seven, meanwhile, is doing something productive. She calls Janeway and Chuckles down to Astrometrics, but his hopes for a three-way are quashed when Seven pulls up an image on the screen. Sensors have picked up a vessel. A Federation vessel.

She explains that she tied the sensors into a series of nearby abandoned communications relay stations, and that it's actually an image from the very edge of the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway tasks Seven and Torres with figuring out a way to pass along a message on the communications relays, and they attempt it. However, no such luck - it degrades too rapidly to make it across the vast distances. Instead, however, Torres strikes on a holographic data stream. Apparently, for some technobabble reason that makes no sense, it shouldn't degrade (shouldn't a more complex data stream degrade more rapidly?).

Janeway immediately calls up the Doctor and has him report to Astrometrics. Despite the risks of his program essentially fragmenting across the long distances, she asks him to go. He hesitantly agrees, and Seven and Torres transfer him to the communications array, sending him off to be transmitted to the distant Federation starship.

However, his journey is a success. He arrives, and discovers that he's on the USS Prometheus, an experimental prototype bristling with warp nacelles, full holoemitter coverage throughout the ship, and walls that you know are just going to get dirty the second someone touches them. He can't get security clearance to anything, but he soon realizes he has a larger problem - two crew members collapsed on the floor, wearing the spiffy new First Contact uniforms, manage to tell him that Romulans have captured the ship before dying.

We then head off to the Bridge (a very nice redress of the Excelsior bridge), and the Romulan commander takes command. The ship is in hot pursuit by some pathetic Nebula class ship - the fucking Miranda of the late 24th century - and he decides to test the multi-vector assault mode. After activating it, the Doctor cowers in Sickbay as the ship breaks apart.

But that was the intended behavior - the ship splits into three different parts each with its own set of nacelles, and engages an attack pattern to disable the Nebula ship. After the ship reconnects, the Doctor comes to his senses and asks if a medical hologram is aboard, and if he can access it - the computer responds in the affirmative, and the Doctor activates...the Doctor.

Well, not quite. It's the EMH Mark II, and he's absolutely disgusted to see a Mark I in his sickbay. They banter back and forth about how each is superior to the other, but is interrupted when an injured Romulan shows up. Voyager's EMH pretends to be the Prometheus' EMH, and convinces the Romulan subcommander to head back to the bridge while he treats him. He sedates him instead, of course, and they engage on a plan to retake the ship.

The Mark II is to go to the environmental controls and add a chemical to the atmosphere that'll knock out the Romulans. The Doctor heads up to the bridge, and attempts to activate the atmospheric change in the guise of scanning the crew for a disease he discovered in the injured Romulan. However, they quickly realize he's scanning nothing, and start to interrogate him.

He explains that he's from the Delta Quadrant, but they assume he's merely a holographic spy sent by the Federation. However, this won't concern them for much longer, as they pass out. The Mark II materializes and explains that he simulated a biohazard, forcing the computer to use his environmental modifications.

They then head up to the bridge, and discover the ship is about to cross into the Neutral Zone. The Doctor performs a trick he saw Tom do once to bring the ship out of warp, and narrowly averts disaster when it doesn't quite work right. But to compound the situation, warbirds decloak, and two Defiant-class ships and an Akira class ship show up - everyone wants the ship.

The Federation vessels assume that the ship's still under Romulan control, so they start attacking, but the Doctors eventually figure out how to initiate multi-vector assault mode and attack the Romulans. One warbird destroyed, and the other in retreat, Federation security officers beam aboard, and the Doctors readily surrender the ship.

We then go back to Voyager as the Doctor returns after a long period in which the crew was worried that his signal had simply degraded. He reports that he's fully briefed Starfleet, and that now that they know Voyager wasn't lost, they'll look for a way home for them.

Oh, and there was a subplot where Tom and Harry try to make a new EMH and fail miserably. It was worthless.

Overall, this wasn't necessarily a good episode, but it was enjoyable. It featured Andy Dick in arguably his most restrained role ever, but I think his narcissism and bizarre behavior played well into an experimental EMH. There was even a reference to the war with the Dominion, and we finally get to see some nice starship firefights, unrestrained by magical torpedo counts and pathetic shields. The multi-vector assault mode was kind of silly, but in a bizarre way, it makes a certain logical sense - a heavily fortified ship designed for combat, both for potential further Borg incursions and the new war with the Dominion. It seems like a logical extension of the saucer separation of the Galaxy class. It was also good to see the Defiant classes around, even if the models did seem kind of...lumpy?

Not one of Voyager's best, but it's far from the worst, and it's not an episode I'd hate to see again.

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

What ?! That was one of Voyager's best in my opinion.

Oh there are many, many Voyager eps dealing with religion, Sacred Ground, Barge of the Dead, Coda... Solid episodes all.

Mortal Coil was another good "religion" episode. Taking the angle of a true believer confronted by a crisis of faith. When the afterlife doesn't agree with Neelix's life long beliefs he changes his mind and rejects said beliefs. Which is amazing when contrasted with the stubborn, die-hard stance folks in the real world take whenever their belief system is challenged.

The biggest problem with this episode is 7 of 9 bringing back the dead. Why did so many of Voyager's crew die after she joined the crew? Seems she could've saved most if not all of them with her miraculous nanoprobes.

IMHO, Mortal Coil was the only ep of the whole series that I think was worth spending money on film, sets and costumes for. It was a wonderful religious discussion. The one, single bright spot in 7 years of utter dreck.

That's what Trek does best, when it does these morality plays and philosophical issues. You don't need to Make A Lot Of Things Blow Up Real Good to tell a good story.

But it helps.

Well, it may not always help, but it doesn't hurt...

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was the only bright spot, but it is how Neelix should have been written the entire series, with enough cracks in the goofy facade to show the deeply wounded guy underneath.

It was a special case with Neelix, because the lightening didn't cause him any real damage. It just "shut him off." All the nanoprobes did was give him a jumpstart.

Other mortally wounded people probably could be saved with increased use of nanoprobes and other Borg technology, but I think it's something so repulsive to the average person that they wouldn't consent to the procedure. (On DS9, they had the technology to entirely replace a damaged brain with a positronic one, but they didn't go through with it either.)