Star Trek: VOY Reviews - From Start to Suicide!

Deadlock
The brain trust crew of the USS Voyager decides to fly into a nebula to avoid the Vidiians just as Ensign Wildman is firing out her baby. Surprise surprise, the spikes on the baby's head get stuck in Wildman's lady-parts, so the Doctor beams the baby out. Ain't technology grand?

Anyway, a blast rocks the ship, and suddenly, it's bleeding antimatter. Torres theorizes that a series of technobabble pulses will seal the leak, however, before she can start doing it, these pulses start hitting the ship. With each pulse, the ship takes more and more damage - hull breaches start opening all over the ship.

Harry runs off to try to seal one, but just as he's about to activate the forcefield, another pulse hits the ship and the seal widens, sucking him into space. Harry Kim is dead.

And the crowd goes wild!

Meanwhile, power fluctuations in sickbay have adverse reactions on the chamber the freshly-beamed baby is in, and she soon dies while the Doctor flickers helplessly. A new hull breach starts opening in the hull outside of the Bridge, and Janeway is forced to evacuate to Engineering. Meanwhile, Kes is trying to get away from the breach that saved us from Harry Kim, and ends up vanishing through a rift.

But then, everything's fine. A pristine, shiny Voyager is sitting happily, pulsing technobabble away as it tries to seal its antimatter leak. Wildman is snatching her healthy baby from the Doctor, who is quite proud of the milestone in his medical career. And Harry is...Harry. And there are two Kes' in sickbay.

Janeway and Torres realize that somehow, there is another version of Voyager that is slightly out of spacial sync with their own, and it must be in far worse shape. They discontinue the technobabble pulses and figure out a way to open a comm channel to the other Voyager. After a brief discussion via comm, Janeway and Kes 2: Electric Boogaloo go to the damaged Voyager. Janeway 2 tells Janeway that she intends to destroy her ship, which should release the antimatter and fix the leak. Janeway isn't happy about this, but she knows she can't change her own mind. Yeah, wrap your head around that one.

After going back, Janeway tries one last time to convince Janeway 2 to change her mind, but she won't budge. However, the Vidiians notice they're there, and even notice at first glance that there appear to be two ships somehow - maybe they should work on getting some Vidiian crew members, since they seem to be good at both medicine and science. Anyway, the Vidiians end up docking with the pristine Voyager and invading, killing and thieving organs left, right, and center. Janeway notifies Janeway 2 that she'll be destroying her ship to send a clear message to the Vidiians, and sends Harry off to get Wildman's baby before running over to Voyager 2. She sets the self-destruct sequence.

The crew in sickbay is being slaughtered, but the Doctor manages to hide the baby. In what is Harry's only moment of heroism in the entire series, he bursts into the room and kills both of the Vidiians in there, then grabs the baby and makes a run for the rift, passing through just before the ship explodes.

So there we are, stuck with a dim, damaged, and scarred Voyager with a brand new Harry Kim. Oh yay. But guess what? The ship will not only be fine next week, you can see it's fine as it goes flying away while they print the names of the idiots responsible for this show on the screen.

This episode could have been really, really good, had it had the balls to have fallout over the course of the next few (dozen?) episodes. But instead, next week, it'll never be mentioned again, and that is what knocks this episode down from being a truly good hour of Star Trek.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 27/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

Innocence
Tuvok crashes his shuttle in a generic forest of the week, and kills a Yellow Shirted Ensign in the process. As the ensign dies, he laments that he had no one at home to care he was gone. Tuvok tells him that some girl on Voyager would miss him, and the ensign dies happy, I guess. Go Tuvok, you old softie.

However, Tuvok soon finds three unattended children wandering the forest, and they beg him for help, as their own shuttle had crashed (this planet is fucked, get another one, guys). Tuvok sets about to be both engineer and babysitter for the three rascals.

Meanwhile, Voyager has yet to realize that anything's the matter, instead trying to whore themselves out to some Luddite spacefaring aliens (yeah, 'cause that isn't a contradiction in terms at all) for mineral deposits. However, the aliens are gone as soon as they arrive, giving Voyager the finger as they leave - way to go! Janeway acts offended that some culture didn't buy her dog-and-pony show of wandering around the ship trying to convince them that Starfleet's all about rainbows and butterflies when they happily let murderers chillax in their own quarters, enjoying the Starfleet Porn library and replicating Doritos.

Anyway, back on the planet, an alien search party is poking around. The children run terrified to Tuvok, telling him that if they find them, they're going to kill them. Tuvok doesn't see the logic in this, but hides them anyway. After this, the children are still scared - this time, of the monster that eats them at night. Tuvok assures them that everything will be fine, and that he'll be watching them all night.

However, I guess he went into the shuttle to crack open a brewski and watch the game or something, because in the morning, a shill scream notifies him that two of the children (thankfully, the two most annoying ones) are gone. Tuvok vows to protect her, and arms her with a phaser before going to investigate a cave. While there, he finds the clothing of a lot of dead kids, but no evidence of remains.

Meanwhile, back in SPACE, the aliens are bitching Janeway out for letitng someone crash land on their planet, which is apparently a sacred temple or some hippy bullshit like that. Oh, and they won't let Janeway take down another shuttle, and convenient interference prevents the transporter from working. What a quandary! You know how Janeway rolls, though - she hears that Tuvok has repaired the shuttle some and is going to take off, so she and Tom hop in a shuttle and go to rendezvous with him against the aliens' wishes. However, ultimately, weapons fire from the aliens prevents Tuvok from breaking out of the atmosphere, as the aliens really want their kid back.

So, Tuvok faces off with the aliens on the planet's surface, and soon, Janeway and Paris show up to, I don't know, be ineffective or something. Tuvok tells the aliens that he won't let them take the little girl if she is to die, but the aliens explain that they are the Benjamin Button race (yes, that's right, this episode rips off F. Scott Fitzgerald) and that they age in reverse, reverting to a childlike state, both in appearance and thought.

Apparently, the little girl has Alzheimers too, or something, because suddenly she remembers all of this and the aliens thank Tuvok for looking after her since her handlers died in the shuttle crash. Tuvok escorts her to the cave so that she can become a being of pure energy or some other space hippy garbage.

Tim Russ saves the episode from utter mediocrity, playing Tuvok with utter sincerity and even managing to appear emotionless when dealing with a bunch of kids, but other than that, man, it was boring.

Rating: *
Torpedoes remaining: 27/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3 (Yeah, this shuttle's salvageable, fat lot of good it will do)

The Thaw
Voyager stumbles across a planet that is slowly healing itself after a solar event. It once had a thriving population, but it appears to be dead. Voyager's scans trigger a video warning, and Janeway notes that the warning's expiry had passed four years previous. She orders Harry to scan for the stasis pods mentioned in the warning, and he finds them and they beam them aboard. Ah, good thing they weren't connected to anything other than the computer running them!

When on the ship, the realize that two of the pod people are dead, and three are in stasis, but the computer is providing them with a simulation to keep their brains occupied. However, even though atmospheric conditions on their planet had improved, they hadn't taken advantage of the program's termination command, and instead remained in there. Not content to leave alien cultures to their virtual stasis pod cybersex, Janeway sends Harry and Torres in to join the orgy.

Or party - a carnival-like atmosphere permeates the room as Harry and Torres look for the survivors. They find them, but only after meeting a sinister clown who tells them that he's going to keep them there too, more forced members of his eternal party.

While they happily set about executing Harry, he and Torres finally convince the clown that he should let one of them go, and not kill any of them, because then she'd just turn off the machine, forcing him into nonexistance.

After awakening, Torres sets out to try to figure out a way to disable the computer. They can't risk sending another person in to negotiate with the clown in the meantime, so they upload the Doctor. He makes an offer - an artificial brain to keep the computer running, and let the clown continue his eternal party, or Janeway will shut the machine off. The clown balks at the idea of a pathetic artificial brain, and the Doctor eventually leaves in frustration, but only after one of the survivors mentions something that wouldn't at all help with improving an artificial brain.

After getting out of the computer, the Doctor mentions this to Torres, who figures out that the survivor was telling her a way to disable the computer. The clown, who can detect thoughts, couldn't pick up on it because he was too focused on the Doctor and his offer. Janeway sends the Doctor back in with a more complicated bargain of a fictitious cloaking device. As Torres starts disabling the computer, however, the clown figures it out, and executes the survivor who had clued the Doctor in previously. Janeway orders Torres to reverse all her changes.

As the Doctor and Janeway discuss how to fight the clown, a manifestation of the survivor's instict of fear, they come up with a new plan. The Doctor goes back and makes a deal - all the survivors and Harry in exchange for Janeway. After a lot of hemming and hawing about it, the clown finally agrees. Janeway hooks herself up to the computer and checks in, much to the clown's delight.

After the survivors and Harry awaken, though, Janeway turns the tables on the clown. She wasn't fully hooked up - she was still conscious, notifying the computer of her presence, and her thoughts, but not at all vulnerable to the sadistic whims of the clown. Instead, they sent in a hologram of Janeway to trick the clown. As the lights slowly dim, the clown asks what will become of him - holoJaneway tells him that, like fear, he will slowly fade away. He whimpers - "I'm afraid."

The clown was played well, but other than that, a lackluster episode, albiet one that had the balls to behead someone (offscreen, of course). It tried to be cerebral and spooky, but in the end, it just came off as kind of clumsy, with the only effective chemistry being between This is Spinal Tap's Michael McKean and Kate Mulgrew.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 27/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

I think you should add a body count as well.

Voyager lost a lot of people.....

You skipped "The Thaw", asshole! Watch it and watch your eyes bleed!!!

Tuvix
Neelix is busy annoying Tuvok on the planet, trying to get him to turn into happy spore-infected Spock or something while picking orchids off of a planet (why the fuck would Voyager stop to pick up some flowers?). The ship beams them up, though, and only one man is on the transporter pad - a black Talaxian with exceptionally pointy ears and black hair. Cue dramatic title lead-in music.

In sickbay, the Doctor doesn't have any idea how to separate the two. Janeway just seems to be annoyed at the inconvenience, but Kes is shaken. Tuvix, naturally, hits on her as she runs tests, apparently thinking that once she goes black, she'll never go back. He does it all in that vaguely creepy manipulative "I'm just trying to be your friend" manner, of course. I worry about you sometimes, Kenneth Biller.

After that, Janeway comes back to Sickbay and has taken her Prozac or whatever, because she actually acts friendly now. Tuvix wants to rejoin the security detail, but Janeway sequesters him to the kitchen (which he, unsurprisingly, is better at than Neelix).

Kes and Janeway have a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment one night where they discuss what they miss about Neelix and Tuvok, respectively, and how to handle potentially never seeing them again. There's an exceptionally awkward hug at the end, and I half-expected Kes to say "THANKS MOM" and skip off to go play with Bratz dolls or something.

The entire crew seems to be more than happy to have Tuvix around, except for Janeway (because now she's got nobody to listen to her sob stories) and Kes (because now she's got nobody to have an exceptionally chaste relationship with). Tuvix has figured out that he was merged by the transporter because one of the plants they beamed up had lysosomal enzymes that created a hybrid somehow. That's...not iffy at all. Right.

Anyway, just as Kes starts to fall for Tuvix's creepy charm, the Doctor summons everyone to sickbay - he and Harry have figured out a way to radioactively tag half of Tuvix's genome and seperate them with the transporter. But Tuvix doesn't want to cease to exist. Cue the ethical dilemma - and where the episode starts getting decent.

Now, Janeway has a decision to make - does she kill this man to save the lives of Tuvok and Neelix. She even points out to Chakotay that had they had the solution minutes after the merging, she would have used it without hesitation. But now, Janeway's not so sure. Eventually, Kes comes to Janeway and tells her that Tuvix has asked her to speak on his behalf, but that she can't, because she just wants Neelix back (which is a nice, realistic reaction). And to continue the realistic reactions, this pisses Janeway off - not Kes' desire to have Neelix back, but that Tuvix would try to drag her into it. She drags him off to sickbay, but as he protests, he realizes that nobody on the bridge is backing him up. He sulks off to sickbay, where the Doctor refuses to perform the procedure, believing it to be killing Tuvix, even if it is to save two other men. Janeway doesn't blink, grabs the hypospray, shoots Tuvix in the neck with it, and beams them apart. She welcomes Tuvok and Neelix back, and storms out of sickbay - she's not happy with what she's done.

Apparently, the network wanted Tuvix to sacrifice himself in the end, but Kenneth Biller stood up to them and got them to let him keep it as-is, and I think it worked out much better. It was easily one of the most morally gray episodes of Voyager in the end, and despite the rocky start, it still worked pretty well. I definitely don't think this was what Picard would have done.

Rating: ***
Torpedoes remaining: 27/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

I watched them in order, I forgot about it when doing this batch of reviews. It's up there now, in place of the Tuvix review, which is now immediately following your post. Enjoy!

Resolutions
Janeway and Chakotay wake up in stasis tubes - they are marooned on a planet because they got some mosquito bites that infected them with some contagious disease, but the effects seem to be negated by the atmosphere of the planet. The Doctor cannot find a cure.

Sound lame? Yeah, it is - it's a terrible excuse so that Janeway and Chakotay can play Little Home on the Prairie.

Amusingly, the B-plot of the episode is actually much better than the A-plot - after Janeway has them beam down living supplies, she has Tuvok resume a course for Earth and assume the captaincy, under the strict order to NOT contact the Vidiians for medical assistance. Some of the crew are a little unhappy that they're leaving their captain and first officer behind, apparently failing to realize that this is the only chance Chuckles will ever have of getting laid. Fucking ship full of cock-blockers, Voyager is. Chief among them is Harry Kim, who I guess is jealous that if Chakotay bangs Janeway, Harry will be the only one on the ship to not get laid in the Delta Quadrant.

Back on the planet, Chuckles has built his maste...uh, Janeway...a bath tub because she was bitching about the sonic showers. Meanwhile, Janeway is busy trapping bugs and trying to talk to a monkey like a crazy person. I guess Chuckles is in the camp that the crazy ones are the best lays. He tries to persuade her to just take it easy, but Janeway won't have any of that, there are still bugs to catch and monkeys to harass.

Meanwhile, on Voyager, Harry Kim flips out on the bridge when Tuvok leaves the planet's hailing range. He should know it's bad when even Tom's telling him to shut the fuck up. Tuvok keeps his pimp hand strong, though, and has him thrown off the bridge. Harry storms off like a pouty three-year-old to Torres, who also bitch-slaps him and tells him to grow the fuck up.

A couple weeks later, Janeway and Chakotay brave out a plasma storm, which basically consists of Chakotay holding her and Janeway screaming like a girl. Yeah, that's what I want to see the lead character of a Star Trek show and the captain of a starship do. After the storms, all her bug catchers and a good portion of her equipment has been destroyed - now she has to join Chakotay on his quest to build shit out of wood and wear dumbass pioneer clothes.

Harry soon drops by Tuvok's quarters at 1 AM, where he finds Tuvok reading and sipping wine. Hell, I'm amazed he wasn't in a bathtub with rosepetals floating in the water while Enya plays softly in the background. He pitches the Vidiian idea to Tuvok, mentioning that they have both the good will of Denara Pel and Torres' DNA to use as bargaining chips. Tuvok points out that their technobabble copies from a few weeks ago blew up a Vidiian ship with 300 people aboard. Harry starts getting uppity again, and Tuvok smacks that bitch down hard yet again.

But this time, rather than running off to Torres' coattails, he goes and hits up Kes, who drops by the ready room the next day to guilt trip Tuvok into contacting the Vidiians. Incredibly, this works, and the Vidiian convoy they contact put them in contact with Denara Pel, who is happy to try to help.

Meanwhile, back on the planet, Janeway and Chakotay start to bond in that oh-so-special way, in what is practically a ripoff of a trashy romance novel. Janeway aches after planting a garden, Chakotay gives her a backrub, she resists, but then, after he tells a fake Indian story, she relents, holding hands with him. Great, we've made it up to middle school creative writing assignments - I can't wait until high school where they might even have sloppy makeouts while not daring to suggest the author's true hope for an awkward mutual masturbation session in the back of their date's parents' 1998 Chevy Astro.

As Voyager rendezvous with the Vidiians, they open fire, retaliating for Voyager's destruction of their ship. Denara Pel manages to sneak the Doctor the antidote Janeway and Chakotay need, and Voyager blasts off, firing a few torpedoes in the process.

Voyager arrives, much to Janeway's surprise and Chuckles' disappointment, and they beam them aboard. Janeway happily resumes command, and Chakotay just goes through the motions, knowing that he'll have to tip the holodeck jizz mopper a few extra replicator rations after the reservation he's made for later that night.

As I said before, the A-plot was absolutely awful. No, I don't really care to see the relationship that we know is going nowhere between Janeway and Chakotay falter yet again. The B-plot was good (and actually made a surprising use of story elements from past episodes, and even a character!), but it didn't make up for the rest of the episode.

Rating: **
Torpedoes remaining: 24/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 3

I once heard someone refer to "Adolph Janeway" because of the events of Tuvix. I'm not sure I disagree. It was murder, plain and simple.

No corpse, no homicide.

And I like the argument that prior claims trump secondary (the same reason Skaara got the body and not Klorel in a Stargate episode).

Vaporize someone with a phaser and there's no homicide?

Margaret Donner & crew had it too easy in the ΔQ

Core problem right there

Riight. Because those are the same circumstances, and my reply didn't have a second part to clarify the first (which explained why there was no corpse).

It is possible to watch and enjoy Voyager while being a mostly sane person. You just have to treat it as direct-to-MST3K television. That's what made Voyager better than Enterprise: you could laugh at Voyager, but Enterprise was just plain tedious rather than ridiculous.

Basics, Part I
We open with Suder presenting an orchid to Tuvok - an entirely new species created by gene splicing. Suder wishes to name it after Tuvok, who initially balks, telling him that it is an honor Suder himself is due, but eventually relents. Suder then pitches the idea of using the same techniques to increase hydroponics yield from his quarters, and Tuvok tells him he'll ask the captain.

Meanwhile, the bridge crew find a Kazon buoy with a message for Chakotay. Through a scrambled transmission, Seska begs Chakotay for help, as after Cullah realized that the baby wasn't his, he went mad with rage. She tells him that he's going to take their child and use him as a slave.

Chakotay initially balks - in addition to the likelihood of it being a trap, he doesn't feel like he has any obligation to the situation. However, he goes on a Spirit Quest (TM) and talks with his father (the same actor they got for Tattoo, I believe, which is a nice touch), and his father tells him that his child is his child, no matter the circumstances. So Chakotay informs Janeway that he'd like to go help, and the crew happily follows him into the maelstrom.

Janeway then goes to see Suder about his proposal. She is initially enthusiastic, but tells him that she'll have to think about getting him some of the equipment he requests. Suder starts to get visibly upset, and Janeway storms off in a temper tantrum because the convicted murderer didn't treat her like a special and unique snowflake like everyone else on the crew does.

Voyager soon finds a disabled Kazon shuttle with poison leaking into the cockpit. A single Kazon is aboard, and the Doctor revives him. Chakotay recognizes him as one of Seska's right-hand men, and the Kazon soon confirms that Culluh has pulled a Janeway and essentially decided to try to kill virtually everyone, including Seska. The baby is still alive, though, and the Kazon provides Voyager with a detailed layout of the Kazon defenses.

Before entering Kazon territory, however, Janeway wants a plan in case they run up against sizable forces. Harry suggests using the deflector to generate signatures of other ships to the Kazon sensors, and the Doctor convinces Janeway to mount holoemitters on the ship's exterior to project the image of these ship to help fool the Kazon's visuals. It isn't perfect, but it's not like they've got Kirk in command here or something. Of course, Kirk would have probably just got in a fistfight with Culluh and win after his shirt gets torn, but since this is Voyager, we get plans involving Holograms In Space.

As Voyager proceeds through Kazon territory, Kazon ships continually attack a single point and then retreat. As soon as Voyager stops to try to figure it out, though, a massive Kazon fleet appears. Voyager pops off a couple of torpedoes and the usual barrage of phaser fire as they activate Harry & the Doctor's plans, which actually seem to help (I'd imagine because the Kazon are just space biker Pakleds). However, the Kazon aboard Voyager pulls a needle out of his toenail and injects himself with it. His body contorts and he screams in pain before exploding (OK, space biker terrorist Pakleds), blowing a hole into Suder's quarters and destroying the hallway in front of his quarters (yes, his quarters, because like confessed murderers, we keep enemy combatants in comfort too on Voyager).

Tom blasts off in a shuttle in a last-ditch effort to contact a Talaxian convoy that had been willing to help in Voyager's defense. Just as he is about to escape the battle, though, he is engulfed in the white light of an explosion as a Kazon disruptor hits his shuttle.

This disables Voyager's last and final defenses, and the Kazon board the ship. The Doctor sets a timer to reactivate himself, and Culluh and Seska storm the bridge. Seska mocks Chakotay with the baby while Culluh bitch-slaps Janeway as she tries to assert her femininity. They shove the crew into cargo bays, and soon leave them on a primitive planet with only the clothes on their back. Culluh sneers at Janeway and tells her it's a fitting fate for a crew that wouldn't share their technology. As volcanoes explode in the distance, Voyager departs, sans Federation, sans Maquis, but with a Cardassian, a Betazoid, a hologram, and an entire compliment of Kazon.

Overall, not a bad episode. The only cringeworthy part I can really recall is the Doctor getting instantiated in space and then physically bending out of the way to avoid a disruptor blast during the battle. Overall, one of Voyager's better episodes, and the beginning to the end of Voyager's only real noteworthy arc.

Rating: ****
Torpedoes remaining: 22/38
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 4?!?!

Season Two
This season was pretty schizophrenic in its quality (much like Janeway and her sanity). How does it stack up?

N/A: Threshold
*: Initiations, Elogium, Twisted, Resistance, Innocence,
**: Non Sequitur, Parturition, Persistence of Vision, Tattoo, Maneuvers, Dreadnought, Investigations, The Thaw, Resolutions,
***: The 37s, Projections, Cold Fire, Prototype, Death Wish, Life Signs, Deadlock, Tuvix,
****: Alliances, Meld, Basics Part I

Note that I switched two ratings - I traded Tattoo for Death Wish, in light of the responses and arguments presented in the thread.

Total : 15
Total : 11
Average rating: **,

Will things improve or decline in Season 3? Stay tuned to find out!

You forgot to mention the point of the Kazon repeatedly attacking that one spot on Voyager, to disable Janeways ability to blow up the ship once they'd finally been boarded.



I remember thinking that was pretty clever at the time, but later it became another one of those "Janeway could have solved everything by thinking to set a bomb with a timer" situations.

I had a hard time accepting that the crew just kept saying "Why are they attacking there? It's just minor circuitry, doesn't impact ship functions at all..." when the minor circuitry in question is PART OF THE FREAKIN' AUTODESTRUCT SYSTEM!!! You'd think knowing which circuits are connected to THAT might be something they teach at Starfleet Academy.

Basics, Part II
Janeway leads the crew of Voyager in finding materials and shelter to help make their new 'home' livable. Neelix, however, must be pissed off that there aren't any goddamn Leola Roots on the planet, because he sends Hogan to the mouth of a cave to pick up bones. Yeah, genius plan. A few minutes later, Hogan is promptly consumed by a giant cave snake.

Now, imagine you're Simon Billig for a minute. You're called in to the producer's office just before filming for a new season of Voyager starts. You've been a pretty strong recurring character over the last season, and it's a pretty good gig - certainly helps pay the bills. You sit down in front of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, and Brannon leans in and says, "Simon, you're going to be very excited - we've got big plans for your character." You might smile and respond confidently, "That's great, where are we going to take Hogan next?" Brannon bridges his fingers and points his index fingers at you. "Into a giant cave snake. We're very pleased about this, it'll demonstrate the danger of this brave new world our intrepid Captain must bend to her will." Then he'll smile and lean back, with his fingers still bridges, this time, his index fingers touching his chin. You might stutter out a "Wait, what" before Rick Berman cuts in and says, "Oh, don't worry, Hogan will be very important later on in the season." Yes! There's hope! Maybe they'll somehow resurrect you. "Yes, we plan on having an episode where your bones are discovered by an alien race descended from dinosaurs."

Poor bastard.

Janeway gives a rousing speech to the crew about how Hogan's life will be the last the planet claims, and Chakotay chimes in and says he can make a still out of the blood-stained scraps of Hogan's uniform. Thanks Chuckles, always a ray of sunshine.

Back on Voyager, Seska takes the baby into sickbay. The Doctor was already active, but after her command to activate him, he says his classic "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" line. She wants him to give the baby a checkup, and the Doctor feigns disinterest about the change in command. She wonders what his capacity for lying is, but he says that it's limited to sugar-coating platitudes uttered at bedside. The Doctor soon reveals, however, that the baby is actually Kazon-Cardassian - looks like the Maj knocked Seska up before she took the turkey baster to herself. I bet the Maj pokes holes in his space condoms.

Anyway, the Doctor soon discovers that Suder is the only crew member remaining on Voyager. This visibly disquiets him, but he contacts him anyway, and Suder starts making his way to sickbay via the Jeffries Tubes.

Back on the planet, Chuckles is cutting off Janeway's hair to make a fire, as he proclaims that he's the only indian who can't make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Meanwhile, Tuvok is constructing bows and spears, and Samantha Wildman's baby (as yet unnamed, IIRC) is coming down with some sort of illness. Neelix and Kes wander off to have a chaste kiss and look for supplies, but get snatched by the local cavemen. Yawn.

In what is again the more interesting plot, relegated to B-status, Tom's still alive and has contacted the Talaxians. They balk at helping initially, as they are no match against Voyager, but are eventually convinced due to Tom's intimate knowledge of Voyager's systems. And on Voyager, the Doctor convinces Suder that they'll have to retake the ship. Suder is hesitant, because it means that he'll be undoing a lot of the work he had done to suppress his desire to kill, but the Doctor eventually convinces him that sometimes, such violence is necessary.

Back on the planet, Chakotay tracks down Neelix and Kes, and the cavemen are looking lustily at her two-year-old body, the fucking perverts. Chakotay tries to negotiate, but only gets so far as having a woman thrust at him - showing remarkable self-control, he passes up his only chance to get laid and grabs Neelix and Kes. They, Tuvok, and some other assorted non-notables get chased by the natives into a cave, and the natives try smoking them out.

Janeway, Torres, and Harry lead the effort to get them back, which is basically Torres and two non-notables getting the natives' attention and running away, getting them to chase them. In the cave, though, they try to sneak around a sleeping giant cave snake, but one crew member slips and falls and gets eaten. Tuvok shoots the cave snake in the face with an arrow, and Chakotay keeps stabbing at it with a spear, but eventually, the cave now cleared of burning rubble by Janeway and Kim, they make it out.

The crew reunited, they debate whether or not to try to maintain peaceful relations with the natives. A deus ex machina volcano erupts, though, and Chakotay can save one of the natives from the lava. Yes, this was important, since after this episode, we'll never see them again. And the natives give Wildman's baby an herb so that it'll stop pulling a General Grievous impression. Yeah, that was an important subplot, thanks.

Tom, meanwhile, is accomplishing something important and leading the assault on Voyager. Seska realizes the Doctor's deception and destroys the holographic system in sickbay. Suder gets a message from the Doctor, telling him that his actions will more than redeem him to the crew. He then goes to Engineering and just slaughters everyone in there. He sets up an overload in the backup phaser systems just as a dying Kazon phasers him in the back - he'll never know it, but he was responsible for saving, realistically, the lives of everyone on Voyager, since there's no way their dumb asses could have survived on that planet. As Tom takes out the phasers on Voyager, Seska orders the backups to be activated. However, it essentially backfires into the ship, killing and injuring virtually everyone onboard.

Seska hears her baby crying, and goes to it before dying. Culluh takes the baby and evacuates the ship with the few living Kazon, and Tom and the Talaxians retake it and fly back to the planet to pick everyone up.

Definitely doesn't compare to it's first part (but then, Trek two-parters rarely do), but it wraps it up nicely. This won't be the last time we see Martha Hackett as Seska, but chronologically, her character is dead - she'll make an appearance in the bizarrely-timed Worst Case Scenario and in Voyager's seventh season in the bizarre fan valentine Shattered. Again, points for the B-plot.

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

What gets me is why the Autodestruct functionality would work when primary commmand systems are up, but not secondary. It's like, shouldn't that be second only to life support in importance to keep active?

IIRC, however, it's a frequent problem in Star Trek in general, not just Voyager.

Tuvok and Neelix were killed in a transporter accident. They were already dead. It surely is not right to deliberately sacrifice another unwilling victim to resurrect them.

The fact that there's actually a debate about the ethics of Tuvix demonstrates that it's not as bad an episode as some make it out to be.

Fuck that. If I get merged with a damned Talaxian, you damn well better be busting out the super-technobabble transporter kung fu to seperate us. I don't give a shit how much you love the mashed-together person.

If you want it to be permanent, merge me with something cool, like a grizzly bear or a velociraptor.

I already thought you WERE part grizzly!

So they were dead, but then resurrected from death? Did the companies that issued their life insurance policies agree?

I don't concede that they were ever dead - simply MIA, with the means to recover them. Plus there was no informed consent on the part of the components that they would join to make a whole.

What if everyone hated Tuvix - would the result have changed? If so, why should it have? Tuvix was meaningless to the analysis, absent consent of the missing (or the consent of those with legitimate proxy to act on behalf of missing).

Tuvix would owe any existence to the destruction of two others - akin to capital punishment (accidental or otherwise, the result is indisputable). The death of others should not for Tuvix be an acceptable source of life, whatever the circumstances. It would not have been acceptable if done by design, and the case of accident does not cure the deficiency of lack of consent of those proposed to be sacrificed. Even if we like the new guy, and didn't like the former two. [Now, if the two components were mass murderers on death row, their rights to have their existence restored would be quite different.]

Well... in most situations, it's probably unlikely that you're going to be blowing up the ship when your backups are toast and your primaries are fine.


Still, you think they'd have a way to do it manually. Set up a holoemitter next to the warp core and give the Doctor a phaser, or something.

Or just cut the power to whatever contains their antimatter. That should blow everything up real good.

Strangely enough, I think it's called an antimatter containment field.
One of the few bits of technobabble that doesn't blow my brains out.

It should be easy to turn off. Seriously.

The SHOW certainly was.