Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

The 37s
Harry Kim is apparently scanning for useless common junk in space, because he finds a large mass of iron. What surprises him is that it has traces of rust. This interests Janeway (because, fuck, rust in space is way more important than getting home in the next century) and discover that it's a '30s Ford floating in space.

They beam it aboard into the cargo hold, and so begins Tom Paris' tedious obsession with things that allow the writers to not write about the show's actual premise. He fires up the Ford, much to the surprise of everyone (the backfire causes Tuvok to draw his phaser and aim it at all the gun-toting ghosts on the ceiling), and even tries out the radio - he picks up an SOS.

Back on the bridge, they discover the source of the SOS is on a nearby planet. Janeway reasons that whatever brought the truck to the Delta Quadrant might be able to send them back to the Alpha Quadrant. However, a MYSTERIOUS PLOT DEVICE prevents beaming down to the planet and going down there via shuttlecraft (that's probably a good thing, they'd probably crash the fucking thing). So Janeway decides to land the ship. In terms of Trek overall, this is actually kind of a landmark moment, and really demonstrates how far technology has come over the years - it's remarkable that it can be done relatively convincingly, even if it probably took a farm of Video Toasters a week to render.

They go and investigate the SOS, and discover an airplane is transmitting it, along with an alien power source. They find another power source in a cave, and discover that it is powering stasis chambers holding eight individuals. After unfreezing them, it's discovered that they are from 1930s Earth, and that one of them is Amelia Earhart.

Now put on your hip waders and be prepared for the flood of feminism about to overtake the episode - Jeri Taylor's presence as a writer on this episode was clear. Not that this is a bad thing, but yes, we get it - Amelia Earhart = important. Anyway, Fred Noonan holds the away team hostage until Janeway convinces Earhart to go take a look at the ship. But as they leave the cave, Fred Noonan is struck by an energy blast - someone is shooting at them. Turns out it is the planet's residents - descendants of the original people brought back from Earth.

While Noonan is patched up by the Doctor, one of the descendants describes how they threw off the yokes of their alien oppressors and claimed the planet as their own. Off camera, they show the crew their planets, and Janeway decides to take him up on his offer to let any crew member that wishes to stay on the planet.

There is some speculation about who will stay and who will go, but ultimately, the entire crew decides to continue on. The 37s wave goodbye as Voyager takes off to continue on its quest home.

Not a bad episode, aside from the history bat that they keep hitting you with. It was very much a "TNG's-The-Neutral-Zone-meets-New-Caprica" sort of episode, and to be quite honest (and possibly apocryphal to the BSG fans among us), I think they probably handled both a little more smoothly. TNG's Neutral Zone always seemed a little iffy (and IIRC, RTM's review of it backs me on this), and I found the New Caprica arc on BSG to mostly be "Hey, let's cram more misery in after the public decides to throw their support behind a fleetwide playboy. Yeah, that'll be great AND won't strain credibility at all." This probably could have been a four-star episode if it would have spent more time dealing with the 37s and less time with the history lessons.

Oh, and top-notch on the lighting in the episode, the light coming through the windows of the ship while it was parked seemed very natural. Reminded me a bit of how natural the lighting looked in Generations.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38

Yep. I gave TNG season 1 a 65% rating. About 17 good episodes to 9 bad ones.

Of course everyone's opinions will vary but I can only think of one season of Voyager that might close to any of the seven seasons of TNG... Voyager's fourth season. And they don't even come close to touching an average season DS9.

IMHO.

About The 37s...

How come the decision about whether to stay or go only took up about a few minutes of screen time?

This was one of the key plot ideas behind the show! They could have done a whole arc of episodes based on the crew being conflicted about the decision to stay behind on a comfortable planet or continuing on with the journey!

And I find it REALLY hard to believe that not a single person on the ship would choose to stay behind. If any one thing in the first season points to the show abandoning its premise of crew conflict, this is it.

I hate Neelix.

I just needed to say that.

I think that it could have been a recurring mention, or even have another episode where part of the crew wants to go back to the planet. But anything more than that would have been a little tiring. The one benefit of Voyager's premise was that there was a consistent sense of movement that helped keep it rolling along - sitting around in one spot for too long would have been, well, stagnant. One of the things that really drove me nuts about BSG S3 was how much time they spent not progressing towards Earth.

However, I definitely agree that more time in the episode should have been devoted to it. I think most people watching Star Trek know all about Amelia Earhart, no need for the history lesson.

I think it's a "Two crews, with one thing they share - the desire to go home" nonsense here. Plus, is there really any point to leaving a bunch of no-names on the planet, since they wouldn't be ditching any regulars (and Voyager definitely couldn't handle a storyline split between the planet and Voyager itself, and really, even DS9 had trouble with that stuff sometimes).

Forgot one bit of trivia. The 37s was filmed as part of S1, but ended up being aired as the opening for S2 thanks to crazy UPN politics.

Initiations
Janeway lets Chakotay fly off in a shuttle alone to get high and talk to his dead father. Why he couldn't do this in his quarters (which they depict him doing at the end of the episode) is beyond me. He runs into a Kazon patrol that seems to be operated by a couple of actors who thought they were playing comedic roles. This is understandable, given the dumbass hair they have to wear.

Anyway, they sic Nog on Chakotay as an initiation rite, who refuses to kill him after he disables Nog's ship. He actually saves him from the explosion, but both end up being captured by the Kazon. Nog's elders basically refer to him as a failure and want Chakotay to kill him as an example of what happens to weak Kazon. Chakotay won't do it, though - he only kills when his insane captain demands it.

However, Chakotay and Nog escape, but the Kazon quicky disable the shuttle. Chakotay and Nog make an emergency beam-out, but are stuck on a Kazon moon used to train their young. Nog helps Chakotay through the deadly obstacle course, and they chill until Janeway arrives to rescue them. However, the Kazon arrive at the same time. Nog kills the Kazon maje, which lets him be accepted by his fellow Kazon, and Chakotay gets to go back with Voyager.

Oh, yeah, and the B-plot of the episode was Voyager looking for Chuckles. Snorefest.

Fuck it, if you're going to use the same actor that plays Nog, at least make him something other than a Kazon version of Nog. Meanwhile, I feel sorry for Beltran - at least when Patrick Stewart did that episode that was basically just him and Wil Wheaton, he had character and backstory to build on. This, they basically just tossed them both into a shuttle and shook it like it was a Jiffy Pop tin with warp nacelles attached.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttles destroyed: 1

Projections
The Doctor is activated to an empty ship, barely functioning. It looks like a massive disaster has hit Voyager, and the lifeboats are away. The Doctor is alone in the Delta Quadrant.

However, Torres soon breaks into Sickbay. She claims that the sensors were damaged in the Kazon attack, so it wasn't detecting the skeleton crew still aboard. While the Doctor attempts to examine Torres, he discovers his instruments aren't working. Torres insists that the Doctor go to the Bridge to help Janeway, but as we and the Doctor both well know, he's stuck in sickbay. Torres informs him that they've been setting up holoemitters around critical areas of the ship in case of such emergencies, and transfers the Doctor up to the bridge.

"It's bigger than I thought." he quips before helping Janeway. After she is brought around, Neelix calls the Bridge while fighting a Kazon in the mess hall. Janeway quickly transfers the Doctor there, where he helps Neelix disable the Kazon. However, in the process, he gets injured and starts to bleed. After being transferred back to Sickbay, he starts to run a self-diagnostic, as injury and pain are not part of his programming.

While there, Reginald Barclay appears. He informs the Doctor that he is, in fact, Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, and Voyager is merely a testbed program he was using to study the effects of isolation on a crew. This is demonstrated when Janeway manages to deactivate herself and all other characters a few minutes later. Barclay claims that an accident is exposing the Doctor to hazardous radiation, and his neural pathways are being eroded. There's only one way to get the Doctor out of the holodeck - to complete the program. Voyager must either get home or be destroyed. For the sake of time, Barclay suggests the latter.

The Doctor and Barclay head to Engineering, where the program has reset itself to the chaos following the Caretaker bringing the ship to the Delta Quadrant. He first aims to destroy the holoprocessor in Engineering, which should prove that he is a human being, and then the Warp Core itself.

However, Chakotay appears, and warns him not to do it - that he is holographic, that he's been trapped in the Holodeck after being transferred there for some shore leave, and that if he ends the program, he will be destroyed along with it. Chakotay and Barclay battle over this, but the Doctor collapses in pain.

He wakes up again in Sickbay, with everyone happy to have him back - he's been rescued from the holodeck. The Doctor learns that Reginald Barclay was just a manifestation of his latent programming, as Reg helped with the Doctor's personality subroutines (No wonder he fails miserably with women). However, Kes soon demonstrates shock that he doesn't think they are married. Barclay then reappears, telling him there's still time. The Doctor collapses again...

To reawaken in the Holodeck (which is, I'm pretty sure, the first time we've actually seen the 'grid' view of the Holodeck on Voyager). Everyone is happy to have him back, and he is transmitted back to Sickbay. Kes has heard the rumor that in one version of his delusion, they were married, and tells the Doctor that it'll be their secret, as Neelix would get jealous. Just to be sure, he sticks his hand out the door, and smiles happily as it dissolves.

So, here's something funny. This should sound familiar to a lot of you. It's a hell of a lot like TNG's "Frame of Mind," one of my least favorite TNG episodes. Hell, it even features a TNG character and was directed by Jonathan Frakes. However, I liked this one a lot more. It seemed more straightforward and less like it was trying to fuck with the audience, the alternate reality the Doctor encountered with the severely damaged Voyager seemed a little more realistic, and it played on the notion of the Doctor as a person and what exactly it means for him to be alive. Additionally, it didn't have Jonathan Frakes bellowing for 40 minutes.

So, I'm going to be a hypocrite and rate this one pretty well, but I still think it could have better-utilized the cast to help present a more convincing illusion.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 1

Elogium
Kenneth Biller and Jeri Taylor wrote this episode. It is rather obvious who wrote what. Biller wrote the B-plot of a swarm of space bugs trying to mate with the ship, and then a big space bug getting pissed off and fighting Voyager over mates.

Taylor, on the other hand, wrote the rest.

We start with Yellowshirts making out in the Turbolift. Chakotay isn't too happy (probably because he knows he will never have sex during the seven-year run of Voyager), and Tom comments that he's sorry he missed it. Space slut and space perv.

Chakotay is concerned about what it means to let relationships bloom on the ship, but Janeway is a little less than worried about it. However, this will change as the EM fields Ken Biller's space bugs are emitting force Kes into an early Elogium, the Ocampan's one-and-only birthing cycle. This apparently is designed to make Kes into a giant quivering stereotype where she's eating bugs and flowers and crying all the time. I've always found Jeri Taylor's handling of issues surrounding women to be oddly patronizing (like all the history lessons in The 37s regarding how important Amelia Earhart is).

Kes wants to take advantage of her fertile cycle and have a baby with Neelix, but Neelix is unsure about fatherhood. After he talks about it with Tuvok, however, who provides a dispassionate yet convincing argument for how rewarding being a father can be, though, he accepts.

This terrifies Kes, who now pulls a 180 and is worried about having a baby. She talks with the Doctor about it, and he offers a little advice, but is mostly there for her to simply talk to. In the end, it is revealed that she doesn't want to have a baby, especially after the Doctor tells her that it was likely a false positive, and that she will probably be able to conceive later.

This prompts a discussion between Chakotay and Janeway about how they'll probably have to start dealing with the issue of families on the ship, and how Voyager will likely end up spanning a generation just in its journey home. They decide to cross that bridge when they come to it. Amusingly, littered throughout the episode are characters mentioning how bad of a place a starship is to raise a child.

This brings up a curious idea in the Star Trek universe - over in RTM's TNG review thread, he mentions frequently how ridiculous of a notion it is to have children aboard a starship. Perhaps his feelings are shared even in the Trek universe. I get the impression, especially from the designs of ships post-TNG, that the Galaxy class starship was of a design that seemed to just reek of opulence, even in the Star Trek universe itself - it was something of a symbol of a decadent, comfortable culture. Maybe this 'city in space' Galaxy class was the exception that demonstrates the rule. However, these thoughts do not help raise the score of the episode.

Anyway, this episode was about as subtle as a brick to the face. Props to Jennifer Lien to put up with it.
Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 1

Isn't that also the episode that introduces the pregnant Ensign Wildman?

If they can only have one child and they only live a couple years how the heck do the Ocampa not go extinct?

This would only work if each Ocampa pair have multiple children at the time of that birth.

Because if they only had one child per two adults, the population would keep going down, not to mention if there are deaths or terminated pregnancies.

Yes, thank you for mentioning that, I forgot. One of Voyager's rare recurring characters.

Non Sequitur
Harry wakes up next to an attractive woman, instantly cluing us in that this is a parallel reality. He is in San Francisco, and apparently, a buddy of his from the Academy was sent on Voyager in his place. Libby chastizes him for joking about being on Voyager when the memorial service was only a month before.

Because Harry doesn't know a good thing when he's got it, he starts to investigate, but not before fucking up a presentation on a new runabout engine he designed to a bunch of Admirals, raising suspicions about him at Starfleet. He eventually looks at Voyager's crew manifest, and discovers that Tom Paris wasn't aboard either. He then goes to Marseille to visit Paris, only to find him to be a belligerent drunk who missed boarding Voyager because Odo held him in detention after got in a barfight with Quark.

After Harry returns, he is questioned by Starfleet security - they now believe him to be a Maquis spy, especially after going and chatting with Paris. He's fitted with an ankle bracelet and released on his own recognizanse, however, so I guess they aren't that concerned about it. However, when returning home, a coffee shop owner flags him down, a member of a species that navigates a 'timestream' Harry intersected. He says there's no way to be certain he can get home, but he gives Harry coordinates for a nearby timestream intersection point.

After going home and removing the ankle bracelet, Harry says goodbye to Libby before running from security forces. He is eventually captured, but the officer is punched out by Tom Paris, who is going to help Harry because he was the only person who had given a damn about Tom's life. They beam to Harry's experimental runabout and use it to escape. They go to the intersection point, being hounded by a starship sent to bring them in. With the runabout on the brink of destruction, Harry replicates the circumstances of his initial journey and successfully returns to his own reality, just as the runabout explodes. Voyager plucks him out of his shuttlecraft just before it explodes in his own reality, and Harry is happy to see Tom in a more constructive place.

This episode was pretty boring, but it gets an extra star for going to Earth, and showing what a miserable place it is. Also, this episode featured three uses of stock footage cut from Star Trek IV - right down to the bizarre shuttlecraft and movie-era uniforms. Way to go, guys.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 2

I agree, but let's face it, their race never should have survived anyway.

Additionally, this information all comes from Kes, who didn't exactly spend a lot of time amongst her own people, and was pretty 'young' - it could be that she didn't quite have the full picture either. Of course, that's fanwanking it all away - it was just a BS constraint.

Incidentally, it's these kind of episodes, which are littered throughout Trek, no matter the series, that are the reason why the latest Star Trek film was necessary - writers cordoning off entire sections of canon for little one-off moments because they are too lazy to do it right.

I'm actually enjoying these reviews. So far, more entertaining than the actual episodes. If Kyle manages to complete the entire series before topping himself, he should be given a prize!

Voyager DVD boxset?

Delivered by Kate Mulgrew.

Twisted
Kes walks into a dark Chez Sandrine, because apparently no one told her that walking around in the dark in Marseille is an excellent way to get murdered. However, the lights come up and everyone yells surprise! It is Kes' second birthday, and apparently, her only friends are part of the senior staff. Anyway, Tom gives Kes a locket that is really more the size of a giant pocketwatch, prompting jealousy from Neelix. The festivities are brought to a close when Tuvok reports of an anomaly from the bridge, the audio becoming distorted and echoed as the message progresses.

The partygoers start trying to make their way back to the bridge, but find that, no matter where they go, they end up somewhere other than where they intended to be - back in Chez Sandrine. Even the Doctor cannot transfer himself back to Sickbay - he always ends up stuck in Tom Paris' masturbation fantasy.

After reconvening, the senior staff splits off in pairs - Kim and Janeway to the Bridge, Torres and Paris to Engineering, Kes and the Doctor to try to figure out a way to get him back to Sickbay, and Chakotay and Neelix to, uh, the Bridge as well? I don't really remember, because I was too busy laughing at Chakotay's reaction to Neelix volunteering to go with him. He had this quiet look of "Oh fuck" on his face. Whether it was in-character or Robert Beltran revealing his feelings about the show, we'll never know.

Torres and Paris make it back to Engineering, and start working on a way to beam to the Bridge. But Harry and Janeway encounter the spacial anomaly, and it ends up warping Janeway. Maybe this is why she is batshit fucking crazy. Chakotay loses Neelix, but finds Tuvok, and once again, everyone ends up in Chez Sandrine. They discover that the ship is essentially folding back in on itself, creating an entirely new configuration. How anything still fucking works is left as an exercise to the viewer. Anyway, attempts to explode what they called a 'spacial implosion' fail and accelerate the folding of the ship.

There is a brief struggle over what to do next, with Tuvok and Chakotay facing off, but it ends predictably with everyone saying their goodbyes. The spacial implosion finally engulfs the holodeck...and everyone is fine. It did nothing. And hey, Janeway's back to 'normal' too. Hooray.

They discover afterwards that something like 600 gigaquads (because in the future, computers will be big into quaternary logic, never mind the fact that it doesn't make any fucking sense, though you can thank TNG for that) of data was left behind by the anomaly, and Voyager's entire database had been copied - it looks like it was a first contact, and that was the only way the species had to communicate. Of course, this 600 gigaquads of information will never be referenced or noted again, because that would actually require thought.

Oh, yeah, and this one had me yelling at the screen - it started with a ring engulfing the ship, and Tuvok decides to try to fly through it. Here's a thought, you dumbass - take Spock's advice from STII and polish up your three-dimensional thinking - just fly up and over it. Fuck.
Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 2

Parturition
The episode opens with Tom helping Kes learn how to fly a shuttlecraft while under attack from the Jem'Hadar. Sure am glad they got holographic representations of Jem'Hadar ships to Voyager in the weeks between Sisko making contact with the Dominion and Voyager heading into the Badlands instead of, y'know, tossing a few more photon torpedoes on board or testing the gel packs so they can't catch fucking viruses.

Anyway, this leads to more jealousy from Neelix, and it eventually boils over, with Neelix and Tom getting in a "fight" - in actuality, they toss spaghetti on each other and roll around on the floor for a bit. Janeway ends up assigning them on a trip together to the surface of a planet to gather food and supplies.

On the way down, though, the EM interference in the atmosphere brings down the shuttle. Surprise! Neelix and Tom are then forced to work together to survive on the planet's surface, which ends up being very hostile and not really the sort of place that you go to look for fresh produce, although it does remind me of the produce section of those skeezy not-quite-national supermarkets and WinCo Foods.

After they hole themselves up in a cave, they discover that a baby has hatched, and that it is likely a sentient reptilian humanoid. No, not Xindi-Reptilian, unfortunately. Voyager is busy dealing with their grown counterparts above the planet, but they then escape into the planet's atmosphere through a break in the storm, and start looking for Tom and Neelix.

They have their own problems, though - the baby has stopped breathing. Neelix wants to pump it full of performance-enhancing steroids or something, but the hypospray gives Tom the idea to use it as an inhaler for the baby to better breathe the atmosphere. This works, and Tom and Neelix discuss Kes, with Tom reassuring Neelix that while he is attracted to Kes, he won't make a move on her, because he respects Neelix. Why, I have no idea.

Anyway, the reptilians track down the baby and howl at Tom and Neelix before Voyager beams them away and makes a hurried exit from the planet, leaving behind yet another shuttle.

This gets one more star than it probably deserves because it does wrap up a long-running story thread of Neelix and Tom's rivalry with regards to Kes. If only it hadn't been so boring. I mean, fuck, if you want 'Stuck in a cave' done right, just look at DS9 - you know which one I mean .

Oh, yeah, and this episode features the writers blatantly giving us the finger - after Tom narrates virtually everything he does as he starts going down to the planet, Neelix snaps that he isn't going to be impressed by "technobabble." Yes, that's a quote. They say it. They recognize it. AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY.
Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Persistence of Vision
Janeway's stomping around the ship being a royal bitch because she's shit at time management. Between Torres and Kim trying to set up the EMH in key areas in the ship (hinted at in Projections), Neelix wanting to talk about negotiations with an alien race, and Tuvok needing a half hour to discuss security matters, she is apparently just overwhelmed. I'm not even sure why Janeway needed to be present for the EMH test, but ultimately, the Doctor notices that she's snapping at everyone for no reason and tells her to take some time in the holodeck to unwind. Not just tells - orders. Go holographic rights.

So, because babysitting kids is apparently Janeway's idea of a good time, she heads back to her Victorian holonovel, but spends a good deal of the time sucking face with a hologram. This is a recurring theme for her (boy, can't wait to review Spirit Folk), and the 'mystery' deepens when she hears someone playing the piano, which the little girl, her makeout partner, and the housekeeper all studiously deny occurring. Fuck, does anyone give a shit about this besides Jeri Taylor? This scene also made me realize something - the little boy is a young John Connor - it's Thomas Dekker. Ironically, he spends his time on Voyager being a petulant child as well. It does, however, make me realize just how young I would have been at this point in Voyager's run - nine years old. Of course, at nine, I still hadn't seen an episode of Voyager (that wouldn't happen until middle school).

Anyway, Janeway gets called up to the bridge and talks with the alien Neelix was whining about, and he's very mysterious and cloaked in shadow. Spoooooooky. I guess. However, Janeway starts seeing elements from her holonovel around the ship - a teacup here, cucumber sandwiches there, and then the characters themselves start making appearances as well, culminating in the housekeeper trying to murder Janeway after she was hearing Mark whispering to her.

The Doctor can't find anything wrong with Janeway, and soon, the aliens start attacking the ship - a Kazon and Generic ship decloak as well to join in the fun, and Janeway rushes off to the bridge. The figure walks out to reveal himself as Mark - dun dun dun! However, everyone sees something different - Tuvok sees his wife, Tom sees his father, and Harry sees Libby (but the audience doesn't - geeze, you couldn't get the same actress a couple of episodes later?). The more people look at these images, they quickly become catatonic. Janeway rushes off to engineering after Torres succumbs to a fantasy in which she's banging Chakotay, but she too becomes catatonic after Mark shows up and seduces her.

Only the Doctor and Kes remain in control of their mental faculties, and the Doctor has Kes go to Engineering to try to complete some technobabble Torres was working on. While there, she sees Tom terribly burnt, but realizes that she is starting to see things too. As she starts working on executing the technobabble, with the Doctor walking her through it while he's reading a Wikipedia article on the ship's warp drive, Neelix shows up, and expresses grave concern. But it soon becomes obviously not-Neelix, as he snaps at Kes and soon, she believes that she is covered in terrible boils. The Doctor tells her that she can push these images back with her telepathic abilities, and she does so, activating the technobabble device and unveiling the evil alien.

The crew now conscious, Janeway confronts the alien, but he, along with the ships, disappear mysteriously, never to be mentioned again. The other thing to not be mentioned again? Torres' wanting to jump Chakotay's bones - maybe she was actually convinced by Janeway's rambling at the end of the episode about how some of what they saw should stay buried.

The first half of the episode was absolutely awful. The second half picked up, but I'll be damned if whenever that fucking holonovel shows up, I shut off.
Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Tattoo
Chakotay leads an away team to a planet hoping to find some ore to use in repairing the warp coils. While on the planet, he discovers a marking in the ground that reminds him of a childhood experience while on an expedition with his father to find the Rubber Tree People of his ancestors.

Back on the ship, they continue looking for the ore, as what they found on the planet was contaminated and wouldn't work for Voyager's purposes. Torres finds another planet, and Chakotay leads another away team. However, they cannot beam down - whenever they focus a transporter beam, a storm appears directly at the destination, preventing the transport.

Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, and Torres go down in a shuttle, and incredibly, it does not crash. The lush jungle that they encounter cues further memories of Chakotay's struggle with the old ways of his father, and the new ways he wishes to embrace. A nice bit of continuity had Captain Sulu recommend Chakotay for the Academy while he was patrolling the Cardassian border. These are the kind of one-off continuity mentions that build a mythos, not styme it with hopeless restrictions - imagine the stories implied simply by this statement, rather than the stories killed by shit like "Ocampans can only have one kid ever."

While Chakotay is wandering thorugh his memories, though, Neelix is being attacked by a bird, and almost loses an eye. The Doctor heals him, but through a cold - he has programmed himself with a flu per Kes' suggestion that if he understood the fear and anxiety that comes with an ailment, then maybe he could better relate to patients like Ensign Wildman, whom he practically shoved out of sickbay after dismissing her concerns about back pain.

The away team soons finds evidence of a settlement that reminds Chakotay of a settlement he and his father found as well, but the bad weather picks up, and he's knocked out by a falling branch. The rest of the away team beams up - an indication that their efforts were being unnaturally thwarted.

While Chakotay is unconscious, he dreams of the encounter with the Rubber Tree people he and his father had, and of his father accepting the markings of the Rubber Tree people on his face. When he awakes, he strips and finds some native clothing to wear as he continues to search for the indiginous people of the planet.

Janeway decides to take the ship into the atmosphere in hopes of beaming him out, but as Tom does so, massive storms envelop the ship - it's soon caught in a tornado. Great, Voyager is the goddamn trailer park of the Delta Quadrant.

Chakotay seeks shelter from the storm in a cave, where he finally encounters the indiginous people. They use a small translator device and explain - they went to earth thousands of years ago and gave the gift of language and culture to a tribe that deeply respected the land. These people migrated from frozen tundra to the Central American rain forests and thrived, only to be massacred by other civilizations claiming to come in peace. The remnants disappeared into the jungle, so well hidden that even the alien race couldn't find them when they returned to look.

Having made successful first contact with these people who helped seed life on Earth, they release Voyager from the movie Twister and let them beam down to retrieve Chakotay, who thanks him for their generosity of some of the materials that they were looking for. He explains that he took his father's tattoo as his own to help reconcile their differences after his father died, and the aliens and Chakotay thank the land once more before departing.

Overall, this was a pretty strong episode, aided by guest stars that seemed to be genuine characters (and hell, the kid playing young Chakotay even seemed to have some of Beltran's mannerisms down, which is always a nice touch). It was an interesting story, and it expanded the idea presented in TNG that the spacefaring races of the Alpha Quadrant were shaped by external forces, from the initial seed that prompted so many genetically compatible species, to other spacefaring cultures that changed how they would grow and develop as cultures and societies.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Cold Fire
We open with Tuvok tutoring Kes on her telepathic abilities. He tells her that she must control her emotions if she wishes to control her abilities. After the session, she goes on duty to Sickbay, where the Doctor laments that she is always late after these sessions. But soon, they hear a noise and a rattling. They open a storage locker, and the Caretaker's remains are jittering in a specimen jar.

Though Janeway and Tuvok initially express disbelief that anything occurred, they soon witness it themselves. Harry scans and locates the general area that a sporocystian lifeform, which is what the Caretaker was, might be in, and then Torres uses the remains as a compass to help direct Voyager towards the lifeform.

What they encounter is surprising - a smaller version of the Caretaker's array, populated entirely by Ocampans. Janeway contacts them, only to be brushed off, because apparently, spacefaring Ocampans are all utter dicks. However, when she gets Kes to talk with them, they are far more interested.

The Ocampans reveal that Voyager has something of a reputation as being a harbinger of death and destruction. If these clowns are actually getting a rep in the Delta Quadrant, it's no small wonder the Kazon have any power whatsoever.

The lead Ocampan takes an interest in Kes, and starts showing her how to better use her abilities - telekinesis. She moves a cup, then the molecules in the tea in the cup itself, forcing the tea to boil. Meanwhile, the lead Ocampan directs Voyager to a location to meet the Caretaker's companion, named Sespiria. Meanwhile, Janeway directs Torres to develop a failsafe to use against Sespiria in case she demonstrates the powers the Caretaker had.

Eager to show off her new abilities to her mentor, she demonstrates the boiling tea trick to Tuvok. However, she finds that she can't control it, and quickly brings it to such a temperature that it shatters the cup. She yells for Tuvok to help her, but when she turns to look at him, he's bleeding from his orifices and his body is completely swelled up - Kes is boiling his blood.

The Doctor is able to revive him and set him on a path to a full recovery, but Tuvok does not require an apology - he says it is merely proof that she needs his continued training to help control her abilities. She goes off to the aeroponics bay to relax, and is met by the lead Ocampan again. He demonstrates a new ability - to see the life in other living things, and take it. She does so, killing all the plants in the room.

Finally, the crew detects Sesperia's presence. After Engineering fails to respond when they detect she has arrived there, Tuvok gathers a security attachment and goes down to check it out. Tuvok calls Janeway and tells her that Sespiria is there, and Janeway rushes off to meet her. When she arrives, Engineering is empty. She hears sobbing, and finds a little girl hiding beneath a console, clutching the Caretaker's remains. She identifies herself as Sespiria, and accuses Janeway of killing the Caretaker. Janeway tries to explain, but then notices something drip onto her shoulder. She touches it and realizes it's blood - she looks up and sees the Engineering and Security staff pinned against the ceiling.

Kes is then confronted by the lead Ocampan, who tries to convince her to go back with him to the Ocampan array. She resists, and Neelix tries to come to her rescue, but is flung across the room telekinetically by the lead Ocampan.

Meanwhile, Janeway is being lifted up by Sespiria, as a far more adult and far more hate-filled voice vows to teach the crew of Voyager what frail creatures they are, as she starts shaking she ship apart. However, in order to escape the lead Ocampan, Kes pulls her boiling trick on him, and he doubles over in pain, which transfers to Sespiria, dropping everyone pinned to the ceiling. Janeway grabs the device Torres created, zaps Sespiria with it, and erects a forcefield around her.

After Sespiria realizes she hsa been defeated, temporarily, Janeway lets down the forcefield and puts away the device, demonstrating clemency and proof that she only wants to get home, not to kill any of the Caretaker's race. Sespiria takes the lead Ocampan away, and disappears. Janeway expresses hope of finding her again, but in true Voyager fashion, this entire episode will never be mentioned again.

Overall, an entertaining episode, but I can't help but feeel that they really blew their hand here - finding the Caretaker's companion should have been reserved for a season finale for Season 4 or 5, not a midseason one-off in Season 2. Or hell, really, it probably should have been used to wrap up the series, rather than all that Borg nonsense and Future Janeway being even more delusional than Present Janeway. But, for a Brannon Braga piece, it wasn't awful, and featured a pretty good use of Kes that didn't seem to be insulting at the same time.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Back to the 37s - Howcum a Jap soldier from 1937 was so nice and happy and peaceful and cooperative? Weren't they raping Nanking at the time? Shouldn't he have been trying to kill Earhart and Noonan as spies?

One of the most painful moments was when Janeway starts reading Amelia's name tag. One. Letter. At. A. Time. Fuck, I know the show was written for 6th grade minds, but do we need a Sesame Street moment?

Hmm... Cold Fire should have been a two-part episode or longer arc.

Dealing with the other Caretaker and with Kes's emerging mental powers... all that should not have been resolved by one episode.

Same goes for Alliances later in the season. That should have played out over a few episodes.

Maneuvers
Chakotay and Torres are called out of a hoverball (how fucking generic) match to the bridge. Tuvok has found a beacon transmitting on a Starfleet frequency. Everyone is surprised and thrilled at this, and Voyager goes to investigate. However, a Kazon ship bursts from a nebula and attacks a single point on Voyager's shield grid, opening up a large enough hole to fit a small torpedo ship through - after it crashes into Cargo Bay 2, the Kazon aboard steal a transporter control module and use Voyager's transporters to beam off the ship. Before escaping, as Voyager is dead in the water, the Kazon hail the ship - it's Cullah and a very Cardassian Seska. Chakotay exclaims "We should have seen this coming" and both Seska and I say, "Yes you should have," except mine had WAY more profanity.

Something I noticed - Seska's much hotter as a Cardassian than as a Bajoran. Chakotay might have noticed that too as she congratulates him on being such a rube before they warp away.

The implications are dire. A single transporter can apparently change the balance of power in this part of the Delta Quadrant, despire the majority of races Voyager encounters having technology equal or greater to Voyager's own. As Voyager follows their warp trail, something Chakotay believes will lead them into a trap, we switch to the Kazon ship.

Culloh and Seska try to convince the leader of another Kazon sect to join them. Negotiations go...poorly. Pooly enough that Voyager soon finds the other Maje floating in space. After seeing this, Janeway decides to hold a meeting to whine about how their hands are tied, but Chakotay mans up and runs off on his own, sneaking up underneath the Kazon ship and then activating a technobabble device to try to destroy it. It doesn't work, but Chakotay beams directly to their bridge and destroys the transporter directly. Good ol' phasers.

He is soon captured, but Seska realizes that Chakotay has wiped the computers, and this somehow makes all the technology worthless. If I nuke the hard drive on my MacBook, it's still a functioning piece of electronics. Fuck.

Anyway, they try to 'torture' Voyager's command codes out of Chakotay while more Kazon sects arrive for a sit-down, but Chakotay resists, instead taunting Culluh with intimate knowledge of Seska's, well, everything. Voyager then attempts a daring rescue, but the Kazon have erected a forcefield around Chakotay, preventing him from being beamed. Instead, Torres simply beams all the Majes off of the Kazon ship and Voyager holds them hostage in exchange for Chakotay and the shuttle.

Voyager starts back on its journey home, but they find another message from Seska - while Chakotay was out cold, Seska stole his DNA and knocked herself up. This bitch is stone cold crazy.

This episode basically exposes how totally inept the Voyager crew is - they get hoodwinked at virtually every turn by a single devious Cardassian. Martha Hackett is the only thing that saves this episode - if it wasn't for her, it would have just been awful. At least it's setting up a story point in advance.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Isn't it amazing how much familiar stuff they have run into from the Alpha Quadrant despite the fact that they are on the opposite side of the galaxy?

There was the wormhole which conveniently connected them to the Romulan Empire, the car and all the people from the 37s, The Equinox, the Cardassian Dreadnought missle, these tattoo aliens that visited Earth, the dinosaurs who evolved from Earth, the Klingon sleeper ship, the Ferengi lost in the Barzan wormhole, Captain Braxton, the community of ex Borg drones from Unity, Q, the Raven, a command module from an early Mars expedition, etc...

What are the chances that Chakotay could run into the very aliens that influenced the exact tribe he was a part of? This killed the show for me, because it never felt like they were actually in the Delta Quadrant... or, if they were, then it just made the whole universe seem very small, and it rarely ever felt like Voyager was that far from home.

I think at some point the writers just decided to pretend they were still doing TNG and that Voyager wasn't really lost at all. Maybe the UPN execs even told them straight up, "Just keep doing TNG. Forget all the stuff you made up specifically for Voyager."

They were just cruisin' along, with their own magic starbase in tow to fix them up whenever they needed it, plenty of time for holodeck fun, and rarely a worry about all the crewmen they had lost over the years.

Fuck, they even did an episode about Deanna Troi couselling Barclay for Holoaddiction... how much more blatant can you get?

TOS felt more like a frontier show than Voyager, and relatively speaking that took place much closer to Earth.

Totally fucking agree. Voyager should've gone through and found themselves in the Farscape universe or something. Every planet a Mos Eisley Cantina of weirdos who don't give two shits about Voyager, the Federation or the Alpha Quadrant.

Only Beltran could do a terrible Marlon Brando impersonation and phone it in at the same time.

Well, species 8472 was a good step in that direction... but then they even mucked that up by having the 8472 plan an invasion of Earth by recreating Starfleet Academy... or whatever the fuck that episode was about.

They just didn't have the creativity or interest in the show to move too far away from was established on TNG. The writers of Voyager were lazy... and got progressively worse as the series went on.

Resistance
This one is going to be short, because so very little occurred. In the opening, Janeway, Tuvok, Torres and Neelix are sneaking around a planet, as Neelix acquires some black-market chemical that Voyager needs to repair its warp engine. This is actually a pretty strong and unique start, really - the crew is doing something questionable to actually repair their ship. Of course, the episode pisses all that away like a drunken Manchester United fan.

Soon, the planet's armed forces conduct a raid, and Torres and Tuvok are captured, while Janeway is knocked unconscious and saved by a bystander. Tuvok is tortured to the point of vocally expressing his pain, and Torres later tells him that she had no idea Vulcans could actually feel pain, because apparently everyone fucking forgets that Vulcans and Romulans are the goddamn same, Vulcans just practice self-control. I mean, seriously, how many times do Vulcans on Star Trek have to behave in an unVulcan manner just to remind people that they don't lack emotions, they control them. Fuck.

Anyway, the man who saved Janeway is mostly crazy, and thinks Janeway is his daughter. They mount a rescue mission, but this is soon hindered by the planet's armed forces - the man distracts them by playing the fool to the delight of the crowd, while it is obvious that he is sane enough to recognize what a spectacle he is making of himself. Janeway and the man finally break in, but in a final confrontation with the leader of the planet's armed forces, the man is shot after killing the guy from the armed forces, who revealed that the man's wife and daughter had been dead for years.

As the man lay dying, Janeway pretends to be his daughter, and forgives him for his wife and daughter. This and the scene where the man makes a scene are the only two redeeming parts of this episode.

Oh, yeah, and Chuckles was busy flying around the planet trying to rescue them. Surprise - he failed miserably at that.
Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

And you could have aliens when pissed do something like they did in the movie The Thing....

Remember the blood test scene where Palmer was revealed to be a thing and he split his head in two and grabbed Windows killing him? Well they could do that to a Red Shirt.

Seriously I think of all the Star Trek shows a Voyager remake would be spectacular. Move it to HBO and do it proper.

Prototype
Because space is apparently one giant Radio Shack, Torres finds a 1,001 Robot Construction Projects kit floating in space. After she and Kim try and fail to program it, she ends up talking to both Neelix and the Doctor for advice, eventually settling on a 'blood transfusion' of warp plasma.

Soon, Pralor Maintenance Unit 3947 is reactivated, and thanks Torres for her assistance in his repairs. The ship starts looking for his companions, while Torres gets to know him better. He expresses surprise that she herself was able to repair him, without the help of 'the Builders,' who were apparently the original designers of the units, and now-extinct. 3947 tells her that he and his, uh, fellow Units have been trying to construct, ahem, new Units, but the power supplies they construct can never quite, uh, provide enough juice to the Units.

Torres goes to Janeway to get permission to help the Pralor Units, but Janeway refuses, citing the Prime Directive. Torres asks her that if they were humanoid lifeforms who could no longer reproduce, would Janeway deny them help (and from TNG's track record, I'd say that's a big fat YES). Janeway says she's unsure, but still denies Torres permission to help the Pralor Units.

After the crew finds the Pralor ship, they go to beam 3947 back to his kind, when he kidnaps Torres. After the Pralor ship ignores Voyager's demands to return Torres, Janeway opens fire, and they almost fire more torpedoes. They're loaded, at least, but we never saw them fired - a requirement for the counter. The Pralor ship is close to destroying Voyager, when Torres strikes a deal - spare them, and she'll build their prototype Unit.

Voyager starts repairs and working on a rescue plan. Tom just wants to sneak up with a shuttle, but Chakotay says, "I'd hate to lose another shuttle." No kidding, since any reasonable shuttle complement on a ship your size would be four, and you've already blown up three of them. Meanwhile, Torres is building the prototype and talking with 3947 about the state of robotics in the Federation, mentioning that while they have many robots, there is only one sentient one, Data. 3947 expresses that he'd like to meet Data.

Soon, Torres successfully completes the prototype, which powers up and asks for programming. Voyager has come up with a plan to fly the shuttle inside the Pralor ship's shield envelope, which should let them beam Torres out. A distraction soon presents itself, as a second robot ship arrives and starts attacking the Pralor vessel - it's another 'race' of robots.

3947 tells Torres that these robots were the Pralor's opponents in a long-running war. However, the Builders of both groups of robots had come to a peace treaty, and tried to deactivate the Units. Since the Units' primary programming was to kill those that would destroy them, their targets became the Builders - they killed them all. How very...Cylon of them.

This prompts Torres to destroy the prototype, and 3947 hits her with a bolt of electricity. However, just in time, Paris arrives and beams her out, running back to Voyager so they can make a split-second escape.

I enjoyed the episode - it had some good discussions on the Prime Directive and just who the Federation can actually help (practically nobody, really). Two races of robots fighting an ancient war is an interesting concept as well. But then, this might just stand out in the sea of crap that is Voyager Season 2.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 37/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3