Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

^Problem there was the DQ also had the Borg, so anything advanced would likely have encountered a cube at some point.

Now finding the wreckage of those civilizations and using their tech...

Hell, they could've replaced all those crappy nebulas with space devastated and damaged at the subspace level by races using doomsday weapons against the Borg.

Drone
So, Seven, the Doctor, Tom, and Torres are all in a shuttlecraft. Unfortunately, the only joke this is leading up to is the shameless ripoff of I, Borg that is to follow.

Surprise, something goes wrong in a Nebula, and Voyager attempts an emergency beamout. Harry Kim fucks it up, though, and as soon as they step off the pad, the Doctor starts frizting. Torres takes his emitter to the science lab after transferring the Doctor back to Sickbay.

However, the Doctor's holoemitter has been imbued with new life. Getting closer to fucking Seven than the Doctor ever will, his holoemitter and her nanoprobes made sweet, sweet cybernetic luuuuuurve. So as a security guard makes his rounds in the lab, he's pretty surprised to see that the holoemitter has done a decent job of assimilating the joint, and even more surprised when tubules are injected into his neck.

Remarkably, he's OK - the device just wanted his DNA. The holoemitter has now constructed a maturation chamber and has started growing a bouncing baby Borg around itself. By now, Janeway and company have realized what's going on, and Seven is surprised to see a baby in a maturation chamber. WHAT THE FUCK. Goddammit, Voyager, we saw Borg babies in the first goddamn appearance of the Borg. Hell, Seven was even in a maturation chamber for a good long while to accelerate her aging before her assimilation was completed - did she think there was some kind of goddamn cutoff where the Borg just heaved out the totally nonresistant minds into Malon garbage scows or something?

Janeway decides to try to capture lighting in a bottle and lets the Borg stay around, especially after they realize that it's what would happen if the Borg assimilated 29th century technology - he is, essentially, the uberBorg. Personal transporters and weapons, advanced shielding, etc., etc. And Janeway wants him to be an individual. So naturally, she puts Seven in charge of this train wreck.

He tries to be a Borg, but Seven won't permit it, forcing him to select a designation ("One," how fucking original), and then letting him assimilate Voyager's library. However, he wants to know more about the Borg. Seven and Janeway go back and forth about this, but the decision is made for them - one of his implants activates on its own and phones up the Collective, who are, of course, very interested. Seven gives him a crash-course in what it means to be a Borg, and One decides that he doesn't want to give up being an individual to be a slave to the collective.

The Borg inevitably attack, and while One helps Voyager's defenses far better than Seven ever pulled off, Voyager is still losing the battle. He clearly didn't read up on the Prime Directive and how he clearly shouldn't be interfering here since he's got the benefit of the 29th century on his side. He decides that the only way the Borg will ever stop chasing his newfound friends is to go to the Sphere.

And destroy it. He beams himself aboard and basically cuts a path of destruction through the sphere, eventually causing it to overload. Voyager gets him out of the wreckage, and he and Seven bid each other a tearful farewell as the Doctor is secretly cheering on the fact that he'll soon have his mobile emitter back.

Yeah, I glossed over a lot of the episode. Why? Because we've seen it all before, as I mentioned. This is Voyager's I, Borg, and per usual, they fucked it up. There was no real moral dilemma here, and we've dealt with Borg attaining individuality. God, have we ever dealt with it. The idea of a 29th Century Borg could have actually been really fucking interesting, and they totally blew it so that he could have some goddamn Tron Guy suit and LCD eyepiece.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: -13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 10
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 9

And as with Seven, Mr. SuperBorg should have been chained to a computer console next to an industrial replicator, making badass weapons from day one.

Where did the 10th shuttle get destroyed?

Huh. I must have missed that episode, 'cuz I don't remember that one at all.

The worst part was when the drone basically committed suicide just to speed up the story.

That's some especially shitty writing, right there.

The drone decided he had enough of the VOY crew. It does have a moral, see?

It got destroyed just before Seven and the Doctor had the transporter equivalent of a drunken night in the back seat of an AMC Pacer.

Didn't mind 'Drone', I just thought thy could've done more with One - it was a potential arc and a better way of offing the Borg than having futureJaneway pop back with some funky new toys, maybe by having One eventually supplant the Borg Queen.

That's going to be VOY's lasting legacy really, taking a load of good ideas and pissing them up a rope.

Nah. Voyager's lasting legacy is going to be literally nothing. That's why we had a prequel series and an original crew relaunch after Voyager. We'll get back to a later timeline only once the powers that be resolve themselves to ignoring anything substantive from Voyager for purposes of canon.

Extreme Risk
Or Voyager attempts to be DS9 and falls down a flight of stairs instead.

Torres is in a shuttlecraft (as if they have any fucking shuttlecraft left), and she's about to participate in the most important scene from Generations, brutally left on the cutting-room floor by an uncaring asshole in the editorial department.

No, she isn't about to be shot in the back and die like a bitch as classic Trek receives its final death blow. She's about to jump out of the shuttlecraft and do some orbital skydiving. And judging by the pudginess of the suit, it looks like it is exactly the suit the Shat wore in that hilariously awkward cut scene. She disables the safety protocols and jumps, but as she's entering the atmosphere, she's called to the bridge, so the computer stops her descent and rights her, and she wanders up to the bridge.

Anyway, Voyager's engaged in a tug-of-war with a Malon freighter over Voyager's interspacial probe. They apparently have a goddamn torpedo factory aboard, but they can't build another fucking probe? Anyway, in the process of trying to take the probe back, the ships inadvertently send it flying into the incredibly dense atmosphere of a gas giant. Now, that's what the probe's designed for, but it's not like they can just beam it back or something - they'll have to go get it.

Tom, of course, mentions that any shuttle that went to get it would be crushed like a tin can, so naturally, they go with the ultimate fanwank option. They decide to build a new shuttle. Remember the Blackbird from BSG, and how its development was largely symbolic of the entire fleet putting aside differences and working together? This is like that, but absolute shit. We get groanworthy crap like Tom trying to add goddamn fins onto the wings like it's a fucking muscle car. Additionally, they seem to be totally ignoring the fucking Aeroshuttle mounted to the bottom of Voyager's primary hull. And yes, it is canon, it's appeared and labeled on screen. See this for how it would have looked if they had a lick of sense: Video.

Anyway, Torres is acting like a bitch throughout the entire design meeting, and eventually blows up at Tom later that evening. After that, she goes to the Holodeck, kills the safety protocols, and starts killing Cardassians too. She then wanders off to the mess hall and talks to Neelix in what is one of the most awkward scenes in the entire show. There's a reason they rarely interact, and it's because the actors have absolutely no chemistry, and the awful writing of this scene just magnifies it. She asks for banana pancakes, because apparently she can't run the fucking replicator, and Neelix replicates them for her. She takes a bite, mentions that they're good, then leaves. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THAT SHIT. We get it, she's emo. Why doesn't she just go to a Holo-Hot Topic and buy a fucking Twilight shirt and skanky stockings already.

The next day, we get to see the interior of the new Delta Flyer, and the first thought is "How the fuck does that fit inside of Voyager's shuttlebay?" Seriously - the thing's the size of an apartment, and the fancy shuttles that Voyager has already barely make it out the door. Torres snaps at Vorik for doing his job (I guess she's still a little bitter about the Pon Farr thing), and then goes off to the holodeck to do some tests. Surprise, safety protocols go off. However, this time, she's knocked out, and the computer is happily about to crash the holoship and kill her.

Chakotay is sent by Janeway to track down Torres, because he's her bitch, and rescues her from the holodeck. The Doctor reveals some reasonably serious injuries, so Chuckles investigates. After Torres rages out to Janeway about them nosing in on her personal life, Chakotay says that if she just shows him the programs she's been running, he'll be able to convince Janeway that there isn't a problem. Because Torres is apparently a fucking idiot, she believes him. He drags her into a holodeck simulation of some generic looking caves, and reveals that this was a representation of the massacre of the Maquis.

Now, this could have been a very dramatic moment. DS9 could have pulled this one off. But Voyager? Fuck no. Instead, she whines and screams like a teenage girl angry that her dad said the stockings were too skanky, and that he just doesn't get that's the point, because otherwise, how will Jeremy Williams know that she like-likes him, and oh my god. She apparently runs these programs without the safeties to feel alive or some clichéd bullshit like that.

Chuckles pulls her off the Delta Flyer test flight, but just before they launch, she begs to get put back on the mission so that she can prove to herself that she's worth having around, and he agrees. The Malon are shooting their fireworks at Voyager, and launch their own shuttle, and the Delta Flyer pursues them. Seven fires "photonic charges," which apparently are a part of the ship's "Borg-enhanced weaponry." So, see guys, looks like Janeway does have her on weapons duty. At least it's better than fucking nanoprobe grenades.

Anyway, as the pressure mounts, the Delta Flyer springs a leak, and Torres jerry-rigs a forcefield around the breach to save the day. Tom grabs the probe and pulls it out, meaning Voyager won the space race, yay!

And now, none of the events in this episode will ever be mentioned again. They don't even win points for continuity here - they just wanted a Torres character episode, and rather than actually stretching the boundaries of the character, it was just more angry Torres.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 10
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 9

The worst part about this episode is that there was never any indication that Torres was upset about the Maquis after 'Hunters' in season 4 (when they first learned about the destruction of the Maquis by the Dominion)

It just reappears in this episode completely out of the blue. If this was BSG, we would have seen the anger building up or simmering for a season's worth of episodes.

And, as you said, it is never followed up on and never mentioned again. In fact, this might be one of the last times the Maquis was ever mentioned on the show.

This episode could have been massively improved if Torres and Seven stripped down and beat the crap out of each other to work off some issues... I'm sure Braga considered the idea.

Perhaps you're forgetting Tsunkatse.

I know the episode you're talking about, but I've never bothered to watch it.

Wasn't it just a shameless tie-in for UPN's other 'hit' show, WWF Smackdown?

Honestly, I think I'd rather watch WWF over Voyager sometimes. It's dumb too, but you don't really expect anything else out of it, and the writers/producers know its dumb.

The Voyager writers struggled with the delusion that they were producing a quality sci-fi series like like TNG or DS9.

In the Flesh
Voyager makes a triumphant return to the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant...err...Starfleet Academy.



Sort of. After seeing an admiral grill some new officers on their assignments, we see Chakotay wandering around the grounds, snapping pictures with the Doctor's holo-imager.

He even ends up talking with Boothby, who points him towards his duty assignment. However, it soon becomes clear that not everything is as it appears - in a bar, a cadet's face and body start rippling and changing dramatically in hue as he's dragged out of the room. A woman starts chatting up Chakotay, and they schedule a date - now you know something's wrong. Chakotay meets up with Tuvok, and they leave to beam back to Voyager. Naturally, a security officer noses in on their business, so Tuvok pulls a neck pinch and the three are beamed back to Voyager.

In a rare moment in which it looks like Voyager knows what it's doing, the crew has found this simulation of Starfleet Academy floating in the middle of the Delta Quadrant. In Sickbay, the security officer somehow manages to kill himself by releasing a toxin into his bloodstream when he realizes he's been captured. The Doctor and Tom are tasked with examining his corpse, and they soon discover something interesting.

The man is actually a member of Species 8472. And so the pussification of yet another one of Star Trek's decent enemies begins. After introducing a reverting agent, his true form unfolds like shitty origami.

Janeway comes to an immediate conclusion - Species 8472 is planning an invasion of the Alpha Quadrant, starting with Earth - they appear to be making good on the threat of purging the Milky Way of all life. And hell, who can blame them - humanity basically helped the fucking Borg whip their ass. Chuckles insists on going back over there under the guise of reconnaissance. Of course, it's obvious that he's desperate for any sex, even if it is with something that has three legs and poison claws.

They have some awkward post-dinner conversation (including about Chakotay being beamed into a room sans-clothing. Thanks, now I'm stuck with that image in my mind), and she invites him back to her quarters. While she's in the bathroom getting naked to inject herself with a compound to help her keep her human form, Chakotay accesses her data terminal. And no, that isn't innuendo, the dumb bastard is actually using a computer. She wanders out in a bathrobe and they share a kiss that seems to indicate that neither of the actors actually wanted to kiss each other.

And then Chuckles gets taken the fuck down by security after she reports that he's human.

He's then interrogated by the admiral and Boothby, and reveals that Voyager arrived only because they intercepted what appeared to be Federation comm traffic. Voyager, meanwhile, mounts a defensive, with 22 torpedoes at-the-ready with Borg nanoprobe enhancements. This is impressive, given that they have -13 torpedoes.

Anyway, Janeway tries diplomacy, and she, Boothby, and the Admiral end up in Voyager's conference lounge. After they yell for a while, Janeway convinces them by taking the torpedoes offline. They enter into an agreement, and the Boothby 8472 agrees to take his station offline and do his best to convince the rest of the 8472 to do the same.

Chuckles bids the woman an awkward goodbye, and Boothby gives Janeway a rose.

God, what an awful episode. Almost nothing happened, they completely fucked up Species 8472, and we had to deal with Chuckles gumming the goddamn scenery for an entire episode. Additionally, stock footage of San Francisco from STIV was cut in, and it was incredibly obvious - the film quality dropped dramatically for no goddamn reason, ancient shuttlecraft, etc., etc. On the plus side, we did see the hilarious return of the Type 1 phaser - I'm not sure we've seen one since the first season of TNG, though it at least made sense here - covert operations. And, true to form, it looked like a phaser was shooting directly from Chakotay's fingertips. Must be magic Crying Indian power or something.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: -13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 10
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 9

THE ROCK GUEST STARS ON STAR TREK: VOYAGER. WEDNESDAY, 9/8 CENTRAL. U! P! N! UPN!

Wasn't that the episode that featured the actors that played Weyoun and Martok on DS9?

Say it with me, everyone.... what a waste.

Why the heck would as species as powerful as 8-4-7-2 need to bother with masquerading as Starfleet officers to attack Earth?

They could just combine their superships together and destroy the planet... like they did in 'Scorpion'...

And why start with Earth anyway? Surely they could start with something closer to the DQ first?

This episode made no sense at all and was just another Voyager episode wishing it was a TNG episode.

Earth centric episodes were the bane of Voyager.

Plus the fact that Valerie Archer wasn't real as she was an 8472.

Unless....

Seems likely to me that 8472 was planning on killing and replacing actual Starfleet officers, as opposed to just showing up and trying to blend in.

All I remember about that episode is that it was nowhere near as bad as the previews made it out to be, yet it still sucked gangrenous monkey balls.

Anyone who forgot it entirely is a blessed soul.

That would imply Archer actually could get laid.

There's one episode in season seven where Tuvok's mind is taken over and he and the other Marquis try to start up a mutiny or some shit like that. The episode was so horrible, I tuned out most of it, and not even Tim Russ's win and awesome could save it.

Maquis.

There's no R in it, dammit.

^You'll be telling us there's no I in team next

There's no I in team, but there's a U in failure!

Once Upon A Time
Y'know, on more than one occasion, I've been struck by how poorly Voyager handled Ethan Phillips and the character of Neelix. Every once and a while, he'd get an episode that didn't make his character into a terrible cliche, and he'd almost always knock it out of the park.

We're introduced to the new face of Naomi Wildman, portrayed by the precocious Scarlett Pomers, and she's traipsing through a holodeck children's story collection featuring a water sprite named Flotter and a living tree named Trevis. However, she's called away by Neelix, who tells her that someone wants to say goodnight.

She wishes her mother a wistful goodnight, as it appears that Ensign Wildman won't be returning from her away mission as soon as expected. After Neelix closes up the call with Wildman, he puts Naomi to bed.

And then, naturally, something goes terribly wrong. Some anomaly hits the Delta Flyer, sending it, and its crew, directly into a crater on an asteroid. And just when we might celebrate the death of the laughably poorly-written Tom Paris, it's revealed that the Flyer punched through into some underground tunnels, and the ship's now buried beneath the surface, with Ensign Wildman seriously injured.

Janeway instantly begins rescue operations, but Neelix is more concerned about how Naomi will handle the news - he's afraid that she won't understand the very real danger her mother is in. Janeway assigns him to simply keep Naomi busy while they try to dig out the Flyer.

And try he does - he keeps her day busy and her mind free from worry by lying about the status of the mission. And then Naomi starts a new chapter in the Flotter stories - "Flotter, Trevis, and the Ogre of Fire." We see Trevis with a twig on fire, and soon enough, said Ogre appears and boils Flotter away, igniting the entire forest. Chilled by the similarity to the decimation of Rynax, he drags Naomi out of the simulation, under the guise of bedtime. He even goes so far as to have Harry replicate a Flotter doll for her to take care of (which Harry rightfully comments is ugly as fuck - it doesn't even look like the goddamn character).

However, as the crew begins excavation efforts, Neelix and Janeway discuss what to do about Naomi. Janeway insists that Neelix tell Naomi, and threatens to do so if he refuses. He explodes at her, pointing out that a starship is no place for a child (a rare display of defiance against the TNG doctrine), and that Janeway can't possibly understand what Naomi would go through if she was to be told that her mother might be dead - Neelix clearly identifies with Naomi's situation because of what happened to his family.

Naomi, meanwhile, has let her curiosity get the best of her. Knowing that away teams are supposed to report in regularly, and that the away team has failed to do so, she wanders up to the bridge just as Neelix and Janeway finish their discussion - she looks at the viewscreen in horror at the crater. She runs away, and carefully leaves her commbadge on the Flotter doll.

Neelix goes to find her, and eventually tracks her down in the holodeck. After confronting Trevis, he gets to talk to Naomi. He explains the situation and how they don't know if her mother is OK. He also tells Naomi why he deceived her - he explains how his family died on Rynax, and how the metreon cascade was just like the Ogre of Fire. She understands and forgives him.

Luckily, Chuckles and Seven manage to dig through enough of the rock to lock on a transporter beam, and they beam the entire Delta Flyer out. Oddly, this is the only part of the episode that I had a serious problem with, and it's purely on a technical basis. Naomi is reunited with her mother, who joins Naomi and Neelix on the holodeck in the newly restored forest. Janeway also recounts her memories of the Flotter program, in which she inadvertently created a giant mosquito. Uh, OK.

This was an odd diamond in the rough that is Season 5 - a character-driven piece that manages to play to Ethan Phillips' strengths without being overly preachy. I think, oddly, Voyager manages to do a fine job of actually demonstrating just what a bad idea it is for children to be on Federation starships with their parents constantly at risk, something that TNG only barely scraped the surface of, and something that, while addressed on DS9, was always kind of glossed-over with the overly mature Jake Sisko.

The worst part of the episode was that the holodeck program was just so grating. Definitely shades of that one TNG episode where Alexander and Lwaxana chill in a mud bath during some of these scenes.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: -13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 10
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 9

After the whole thing with Kes, I always found Neelix's relationship with Naomi to be a little... odd.

TNG had a similar episode called 'The Bonding' which also dealt with the dangers of having a family aboard a starship.

Timeless
Two figures beam into an icy landscape. Moving slowly through the snow, they dust off the powder from an ice shelf and jam a transporter enhancer into the ground. Signaling the transport, the figures disappear, and the camera slowly zooms away from the planet's surface, revealing through the ice a starship. USS Voyager.

FUCK YEAH. SUCK IT, BITCHES.

We then finally meet the two members of the away team - Chuckles and Harry. It soon becomes abundantly clear that there is no God, because only the two most worthless members of the Voyager crew survived. Hell, even Janeway's a fucking popsicle on the bridge. They track down Seven's corpse and the Doctor and his holoemitter and beam back up to the Delta Flyer, piloted by some hot chick that Chuckles supposedly spends a good deal of time inside of. Calling bullshit.

Anyway, we then flash back to about a decade previous. It's a party in Engineering as they bring the new Quantum Slipstream drive online, and Seven quickly gets trashed on a single glass of wine - she is the cheapest date in the Delta Quadrant, to the delight of nerds everywhere. However, Tom's skittish. He keeps running scenarios in which Voyager drops out of the slipstream and collides with random interstellar objects.

After the crew confirms this, Harry's pretty emo, but quickly comes up with a new idea. He and Chakotay will pilot the Delta Flyer ahead of Voyager and map out the eddies in the slipstream, then transmit them back to Voyager so that Tom can navigate around them. Janeway ignores common sense and decides to go with this harebrained idea - further proof that Starfleet really doesn't promote sane people to the admiralty.

Back in the future (uhh...), Harry fills the Doctor in. Basically, a decade previous, Harry fucked up the calculations he was sending back to Voyager, and as a result, Voyager's now chilling with some space penguins and shit. The Doctor questions how Harry plans to fix this, and he reveals a recent 'acquisition' - a Borg temporal transponder that can be used to send messages to specific drones across time.

Of course, Chuckles and Harry stole the transponder...and the Flyer...and are on the run from Starfleet. Quite specifically, they're on the run from Captain Geordi La Forge. Harry has the Doctor start to scoop out Seven's Borg bits and pieces in an attempt to track down her transponder code.

Skipping back to the past, we see the flight begin, and everything's going well - the Quantum Slipstream drive is working at capacity, and Chuckles isn't flying the Flyer into anything particularly stupid.

In the future again, the Doctor digs up Seven's code, and gives it to Harry, who has just finished encoding a message with the appropriate corrections to his calculations. However, La Forge is wasting no time with this time travel bullshit, so he opens fire, and the Flyer's warp core begins to overload.

In the past, Seven receives the transmission, and tells Janeway. Janeway decides that Harry must have figured out how to tap into Seven's brain thingamajig, and tells her to use those calculations instead. Unfortunately, the slipstream starts to degrade, and soon Voyager hurtles out of it, heading straight towards a very icy planet.

Tom does his best, but there's far too much speed coming into the atmosphere. Voyager crests off of the top of a glacier, then slams hard into the snow-filled valley below. A hill shears off one of the warp nacelles, and the Engineering hull soon starts digging into the ice as the saucer tips forward.

[YT="Timeless Crash"]xdG_kxttT0M[/YT]

Arguably one of the finest visual effects sequences in Voyager, IMO. And hey, it just happens to be of the ship getting the shit kicked out of it!

Anyway, FutureHarry soon realizes by his continued existence that it didn't work. As the warp core edges closer and closer to breach, he flips out, stating that he killed them all over again. The Doctor brings him back in focus, and asks if there's a way to simply safely drop Voyager out of the slipstream. Harry realizes that's the only way to save the ship, and sends a new set of calculations. They transmit just before the core detonates, obliterating the Delta Flyer.

In the past, Seven receives the transmission, and tells Janeway. Janeway decides that Harry must have figured out how to tap into Seven's brain thingamajig, and tells her to use those calculations instead. However, the calculations cause Voyager to abruptly, but safely, drop out of slipstream velocities.

After the failed flight, Harry is unsurprisingly emo. But Janeway delivers him a message from himself, and his future self explains his actions. Janeway tells him not to try to understand the paradox, and just let it be, and Voyager continues on its journey, their jaunt in the slipstream carrying them 10 years closer to home.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: -13/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 10
Failed endings to the three-hour tour: 10

Timeless was probably one of Voyagers best episodes Even the reset button wasn't that bad.




I still don't get why they couldn't take a few more short trips with the slipstream drive. Or did it break when dropped out of the slipstream?