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Wacky Reviews: Star Trek

Deadlock - Hugely pregnant Samantha Wildman still hasn't had her fucking baby but Neelix has her fix things for him even though she isn't an Engineer. She goes into labour and we get the woman giving birth shouting "YOU PUSH DAMN IT!" at the Doctor thing that I think every tv show ever has done? Janeway talks about how in a way this baby belongs to all of them. But oh shit, here comes twenty Vidiian ships. Janeway has Paris hide the ship in some plasma thing. The Doctor has to transport the Wildman baby out of Samantha after complications. Suddenly the engines (and lights) cut out. The ship is losing power and severely fucked up. The ship is being hit by "proton bursts" that are damaging it. B'Elanna and Torres try to seal a hull breach. The baby dies because the power keeps cutting out in Sickbay. Harry is sucked into space and dies(!) Kes disappears while running to help the injured Hogan. Chakotay finally magnetises the hull to bring some peace. The hull breach is getting even bigger and kind of seems like it might eat up the whole ship. Janeway feels pretty bad about all this! The ship starts shaking again and there's a hull breach in the Bridge. Then...we see the ship undamaged and Janeway watching a ghost of herself running off the Bridge. Harry's still alive (meh.) Little baby Wildman is alive too (aww.) There's two Keses, one from the Hell Voyager. Janeway realises that the ship was somehow duplicated after going through the plamsa thing. The healthy Voyager damaged the other one with the proton bursts so she has B'Elanna stop them. Both ships occupy the same space and don't ask me how that makes sense. But the antimatter in the warp drive couldn't be duplicated so both ships are taking power from the same source. (There's a lot of technobabble in Voyager.)

Hell Kes has horrible flashbacks to the baby dying as the live baby cries. Janeway and B'Elanna try to find a way to communicate with Hell Voyager. The two Janeways talk to each other by video. The Janeway with the good Voyager wants to merge the two ships (and crew) back together. Not sure how that would work, really! Would all their memories merge together? What about the dead Harry body floating through space? It all goes wrong and instead of merging they go further out of phase (yeah I don't know.) They're running out of antimatter. Healthy Janeway and Hell Kes cross over to Hell Voyager. The Janeways talk about nerd stuff together. Hell Janeway suggests she self destruct her Voyager so that the other one can survive as they'll both die otherwise. There's some nice Janeway self interaction. A Vidiian ship shows up. They attack but their shot only hits the healthy Voyager. They board healthy Voyager and start harvesting organs (Tuvok and Tom go down right away like chumps.) The Doctor hides with the Wildman baby. Healthy Janeway naturally decides to blow up her ship because everyone's about to die anyway and makes Hell Janeway promise to get her crew home. She orders Harry to go through the rift with the baby. The Vidiians really want the baby's organs but for some reason can't find it with their evil tricorders whle the Doctor hides behind a table. ACTION HARRY takes out two Vidiians (why coudn't Tuvok do that?) and takes the baby. Janeway calmly welcomes the Vidiians to the Bridge just as Voyager blows up in a badass moment. Hell Voyager almost instantly looks back to normal. Harry gives the baby to Samantha (wouldn't she be a bit weirded out that her actual baby died and this is a duplicate?) Janeway tells Harry that "weird is part of the job".

There's a lot of great stuff here. Voyager takes damage like never before. Things get grimey! A baby dies! Harry dies! Hair gets messier than ever! You kind of think the badly damaged Voyager will be the one to self destruct so it's a nice twist when the clean one blows up instead. But there's the ongoing probablem of the reset button. None of this damage to Voyager ends up meaning anything and I'm not even talking about how everything will be fine in the next episode: everything's fine even by the end of this episode! What happened to that massive hull breach? They just fix it offscreen I guess. Yes Harry remembers he's from a different Voyager but it's blown off by one line about "weird" from Janeway at the end and ultimately isn't a big deal. For all its fault, Discovery would have done this episode better because they would have at least explored the implications a bit (probably.) Anwayy this is still one of the strongest episodes of the season so don't take my complaining too seriously!

SCORE: 8.5/10


Innocence - Tuvok and a soon to be dead Ensign have crashed a shuttle on a planet. Tuvok then meets some children (their leader is a girl named Tressa) who apparently also crashed on the planet. He promises to look after them and they give him a cuddle. On Voyager Janeway and Chakotay make first contact with the adults of the same species. Their leader tells Janeway how their people turned their backs on technology and isolate themselves now so as not to be tempted by technology that would improve their quality of life. The kids accuse Tuvok of being mean for trying to make them eat rations. They warn that a monster will come and take them at night. Janeway explains the Doctor to the Prime Minister (she has some made up alien title that I'm not going to look up how to spell) and she says her people believe the flesh is just an illusion. She's called away on an emergency. Tuvok tells the children not to let their fears control them. He teaches them Vulcan mind techniques to deal with it. The kids annoy Tuvok by running around playing whle he's trying to work. He disciplines them in an adorable Vulcan way. The children ask Tuvok if he loves his own children. He says they are part of his identity and he is incomplete without them. That means yes. A ship is detected but the children want to hide because it's their own people and they say they were sent to the planet to die. Since the aliens have guns Tuvok hides the kids from them. The kids wonder if their energy will really be released when the monster kills them like the scrolls says and Tuvok tells them about the Vulcan Katra.

Janeway searches for Tuvok but the PM says the moon is sacred to them and it's a disgrace that the shuttle crashed there etc. The transporter doesn't work as usual (sereiously what's with Voyager's transporters never working?) The kids can't sleep and want Tuvok to tell them a story. He doesn't have his lute but does sing to them. Aww. In the morning Tressa wakes up to find the other two kids are gone. Tuvok goes into the cave to look for the missing kids, despite Tressa's fears that the monster will eat him. Tuvok finds the clothes of the missing kids. Sure looks like they've been eaten by a monster that doesn't like the taste of clothes! Tuvok manages to get a message to Janeway and tells her about the girl. The PM is still stuffy with Janeway and won't explain what's really going on. Janeway tells her she's taking a shuttle to the planet to pick up Tuvok anyway. Janeway and Paris are chased by the aliens as they fly down to the planet. Tuvok and Tressa managed to get his shuttle off the surface. She wants to stay with him. The PM contacts them and wants Tressa back. Again she won't just tell Tuvok what's really happening and shoots at him instead. They go back to the surface and meet with the aliens and Janway. The PM tells them Tressa is 96 years old. Their agining process is reversed, they somehow start as old people (how does one give birth to a fully grown adult?) and die as confused children. It's Tressa's time to die and there's no way to stop it, the energy in her body will be released soon (the monster isn't real.) Tressa is still a scared little girl but Tuvok tells her he can't protect her from the natural end of life. Janeway and the PM make friends. Tressa is suddenly able to talk rationally and tells Tuvok he reminds her of her grandson. He takes her to the cave to die.

Okay, so I'll just get the bad out of the way: a species that ages backwards doesn't make any real senes. Aging, by its very nature, must go forwards! I get that they had to do something weird and alien that Janeway and Tuvok wouldn't be able to guess, it still doesn't really make anyway sense. Tressa (and the other kids) never really acted like they were actually 90 year olds throughout the episode until the very end when Tressa suddenly mentions a grandson. And it's frustrating as usual that the alien leader doesn't just tell Janeway what's going on. But the episode still works thanks to a strong performance by Tim Russ. We haven't really learned much about Tuvok's personal life and he plays all the stuff about missing his own children perfectly. The ending, despite making no sesne as I keep saying, is still very touching because his relatioship with Tress was so believable. So yeah this is a silly plot but Star Trek often has sillly plots resulting in good character stuff.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
Deadlock is one of my favourite early episodes. I love a disaster movie! The switcheroo with which Voyager blows up (“welcome to the bridge!”) is a nice little twist that stops it from being predictable.
 
I remembered it being one of my favourites and I still enjoyed it, but the whole thing where half the ship blew up but they were fine by the end really stood out this time. I guess I've been spoiled by tv shows with actual continuity.
 
The Thaw - Harry james on the clarinet for Tom's amusement. Voyager finds a planet that's been frozen over after a solar flare. They find five aliens kept alive in pods. They were supposed to have woken up years ago. Two have died, apparently scared to death. The three living aliens are in some kind of shared virtual reality. Harry and B'Elanna use the other two pods to enter it and find out what's gone wrong. They find wacky circus performers. They don't provide much help and force Kim and Torres to dance and stuff. They turn sinister and stick Harry in a guillotine. The three aliens stop the leader of the circus people (an evil clown played by the great Michael McKean) from killing Harry. The clown can read all their minds because they're connected by the pods. He doesn't want Harry to take the aliens out of the reality because the circus jerks will cease to exist. The clown won't let Harry and B'Elanna leave, threatening to kill one of the aliens by scaring them to death (like he did to the other two.) The aliens explain that their own fears manifested themselves into the clown and his one weakness is that it takes a few minutes for him to be aware of the thoughts of new people in the system. B'Elanna is allowed to leave to explain what's going on to Janeway. Janeway and the rest wonder how they can defeat fear itself. Neelix suggests making it laugh (shut up, Neelix.)

The clown continues to torment Harry, turning him into an old man and a baby. Harry tries to fight back by quoting "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" but the clown brings up the time Harry saw dying people in a hospital when he was a kid. He's about to cut Harry with a scalpel when the Doctor enters the system and makes a quip. The Clown can't use the Doctor's fears againts him because he can't detect the Doctor's presence on the system. The Doctor tries to negotiate the release of some of the hostages but the clown isn't interested. One of the aliens gives the Doc a coded message for B'Elanna. It's a clue for her to do some technobabble thing that will disassemble the system while the clown is distracted. The Doctor distracts the clown with offers of a cloaking device while B'Elanna works on taking his home apart. The clown realises what's going on and kills the alien who gave the hint with the guillotine (why does it scare him so much when he knows it's fake?) The alien girl nearly dies too so B'Elanna has to restore the system. The clown and his mates have a party while Janeway wonders what fear wants. The Doctor tells the clown that Janeway will shut down the system unless the clown agrees to keep just one hostage: Janeway herself. Janeway is hooked up to the system and the clown feels her brain. Janeway arrives in clownland and he releases the hostages. The clown is very excited to have Janeway, but she explains she's just a hologram designed to respond to him. The real Janeway is hooked up to the system to fool him but she didn't go into stasis. The clown's environment begins to fade out. He asks Janeway what will come of him. She says he'll just vanish. He says he's afraid and she whispers "I know" as the picture goes black.

So a lot of people hate this episode and I don't really understand why. Yeah it's kind of just another Holodeck episode, yeah clowns are annoying, yeah Harry still isn't a very good character. But I don't really see what they find so offensive about the body of the episode. I think it's all quite good! Robert Picardo and Michale McKean interacting is fun. What really elevates the episode for me is the ending: it's brilliant! The way it fades to black as the clown ceases to exist was a great choice by the writer (or director or whoever!) It's one of the most memorable end scenes in any Star Trek, possibly! So I like the episode.

SCORE: 8/10


Tuvix - Tuvok and Neelix are sent to pick flowers or something which means Neelix has to be really annoying. He wants to sing a song. Something goes wrong with the trasnporter and Tuvok and Neelix are somehow merged into one person (even their clothes are merged.) The Doctor confirms that he's a fusion of all the matter from Tuvok and Neelix (why isn't he twice the size of a normal person then?) He's also part plant. Kes has to do tests on him which is naturally weird for her. He has aspects of both Tuvok and Neelix's personalities and chooses the name "Tuvix" for himself. Janeway agrees to let Tuvix sit in on staff briefings to prove he's ready to go back to the tactical station. The senior staff can't find out what caused the accident until Tuvix says "sex!" It's something to do with the reproductive methods of the plants they were transporting. There's chaos in the Mess Hall since no one but Neelix knew how to cook I guess. Kes giggles! But things get weird between them against soon when Tuvix holds her hands. Tuvix fits back in on the Bridge really well and Chakotay basically says he's better than Tuvok and Neelix were. The crew try to find a cure for Tuvix but the plants they experiment on can't be seperated. The Doctor says Tuvok and Neelix are lost forever. Tuvix goes to Kes's quarters and tells her he loves her. Kes asks about Tuvok's wife but Tuvix wants some of that Kes ass now.

Kes goes to Janeway for advice. Kes says she can't have feelings for Tuvix because she still loves Neelix and doesn't want to give up on him. Janeway says Kes is going through what they all have the struggle between giving up on their loved ones and shagging Chakotay or holding out for Mark. It's two weeks since Tuvix was born and everyone's getting used to him and making friends. Tuvix is staying away from Kes. Janeway says he's a better cook than Neelix (wouldn't be hard.) The Doctor lets Kim know he might have a way to bring Tuvok and Neelix back. Tuvix plays pool. Kes tells Tuvix she wants to be friends and maybe their friendship could grow in time. Tuvix says he isn't going anywhere...then the Doctor calls him to Sickbay. The Doctor reveals he has a way to bring Tuvok and Neelix back but the Tuvix says there's one problem...he doesn't want to die. Janewa tells Chakotay she wouldn't have hesitated to seperate Tuvix into two if it had been an option right away, but over the weeks he's become a friend. Janeway tells Tuvix that she has to provide a voice for Tuvok and Neelix and she believes they'd want to live. Tuvix says that would mean sacrificing his own life and that would be an execution. She says he's executing Tuvok and Neelix by being alive. He says he thinks of them as his parents but he's got the right to live. Tuvix asks Kes to argue on his behalf. Kes goes to Janeway and tells her she can't speak on Tuvix's behalf like he wanted because she just wants Neelix back (why?) Tuvix returns to Tactical and Paris doesn't know if he should take orders from him. Janeway makes her decisio and orders Tuvix to Sickbay. She calls security when he won't go. Tuvix goes to everyone begging for his life but no one will stand up for him. Tuvix tells the crew they'll have to live with killing him but he forgives them. The Doctor refuses to perform the seperation and he's taken a vow to do no harm. Janeway does it herself. Tuvok and Neelix come back and apparently don't remember anything that's happened (well we only spend about eight seconds with them before the episode ends.)

So Janeway killed Tuvix! That's the part everyone remembers here. They don't remember that most of the episode before that is about Kes's feelings (which is still pretty good sutff.) Should the episode have got to the strong stuff, the death dilemma, faster? I can see why they didn't: we needed time to get to know Tuvix first. Unfortunately once Janeway does decide to kill him the episode kind of paints Tuvix as a villain? I do feel sorry for him, but when he's begging for his life on the Bridge I think the episode wants us to find him a bit pathetic? The crew don't have much sympathy for him. But I do like that they didn't take the easy way out by having Tuvix volunteer to be seperated. Janeway actually has to kill a guy and that's a pretty big deal. It's an episode that makes you think. I just wish it could have been longer so we could have gotten more of the thinking and checked in with Neelix and Tuvok themselves at the end.

SCORE: 8/10
 
Resolutions - Janeway and Chakotay wake up out of stasis on a planet after 17 days asleep. The Doctor sadly reports that he can't cure whatever virus it is they're suffering from and staying on the planet is the only thing that can keep them alive. He wants to contact the Vidiians but Janeway and Chakotay think it's too risky. Janeway makes Tuvok the Captain and orers him not to contact the Vidiians. This is why you don't send the Captain and First Officer on an away mission together! The rest of the crew are annoyed that Tuvok isn't as upset as them. Janeway and Chakotay are given a Starfleet house and all the scientific equipment Janeway needs (she intends to keep working on curing the virus.) Janeway wants a bath tub. She suggests Chakotay call her Katherine from now on. Torres chews out a sad Ensign. Harry and Torres agree that the Starfleet and Maquis crew aren't happy about what's happened but Torres says there's nothing they can do. Kate and Chuckles changed into casual clothes(!) They're actually having fun camping together but Voyager's about to move out of communications range. Janeway makes an inspiring speech for the entire crew (Chakotay doesn't get to say anything.) Chakotay builds Janeway a bath tub and we get a naked Janeway scene. She sees a monkey in the woods. It won't play with them. There's a bit of sexual tension between Janeway and Chakotay as she's wearing a towel. After weeks on the planet Chakotay suggests she should stop looking for a cure as the Doctor couldn't find one either. Voyager detects a Vidiian convoy. Harry suggests contacting them and asking for help but Tuvok sticks with Janeway's orders. Harry gets mad and shouts at everyone so Tuvok has him grounded. Hogan and a black woman go to Harry and tell him they agree with him. Harry goes to see Tuvok in his Vulcan and says he and the others have come up with a plan. He wants to contact Dinara (the Doctor's girlfriend) and offer B'Elanna's DNA in exchage for help (continuity references!) Tuvok still thinks it's too risky. Harry shouts again and Tuvok says he'll relieve him of duty if Harry doesn't shut the fuck up. Harry says a sarcastic "YES, SIR." Chakotay makes headboards for him and Janeway. She admits that Chakotay adding personal touches to their house makes her feel like he's given up on a cure. Janeway sees her monkey friend again. It warns her a storm is coming. The storm gets really bad really quickly and Chakotay helps her home (he's calling her "Katherine" now but he apparently doesn't have a first name.)

Kes goes to see Tuvok. She tells him that Tuvok help her stop missing her father. She points out that the crew's emotional wellbeing is important to them and Tuvok has to understand that they can't control their emotions like him. Tuvok makes a speech to the crew telling them he will contact the Vidiians and take all responsibility for what happens. He was talked around quite easily by Kes. Kate and Chuckles hide under a table during the storm and all of her scientific stuff is smashed up by lightning. She has no choice but to let go. Dinara Pel contacts Tuvok and wants to help. She has a cure and agrees to give it to Voyager. Chakotay wants to expand their shelter with log cabins. Janeway sees that monkey again (is it a metaphor for the child she and Chakotay could have or something?) Things get sexy again when Chakotay gives Katherine a massage. They both look at each other awkwardly after. Some Vidiian ships attack Voyager. Janeway wants to "define parameters." Chakotay just wants to tell another old Indian story. Janeway starts laughing because he's obviously making the story up. They hold hands(!) Dinara contacts the Doctor secretly while the Vidiians are still attacking Voyager. She didn't know they were going to attack and wants Voyager to drop its shileds briefly to beam the cure over. Tuvok does the old "eject something and blow it up as a distraction" trick to distract the Vidiians while the Doctor himself does the transport. Voyager heads back to the planet at Warp 6 (err, why not go faster?) Kate and Chuckles have settled into domestic bliss and planted tomatoes. Chakotay has plans to build a boat. Tuvok contacts them with the news. Janeway and Chakotay look disappointed. They change back into their uniforms and Janeway sees her monkey one last time. Janeway and Chakotay can right back into business as usual on the ship, with an unspoken agreement never to let anyone know that they totally did it on the planet.

It's a great episode, actually! I like how subtle the stuff is between Janeway and Chakotay. You can tell they're falling in love on the planet but they don't really have any overwrought emotiional talks about it (besides the one bit where Chakotay invents an old Indian story, which is one of the best Chakotay scenes ever.) Tuvok being talked into disobeying orders by Kes was a little too easy but the ship scenes were still satisfying too (Harry got something to do!) I liked it.

SCORE: 9/10


Basics: Part 1 - Suder names an orchid after Tuvok, thanking the Vulcan for giving him a new life. Suder wants to do more for the ship (something about plants.) Seska sends a desperate message to Chakotay claiming Culluh is going to take her baby because he found out it was Chakotay's. It seems really likely that this is a trap, but Janeway thinks it could all be true. Chakotay wants to ignore the message but Janeway asks him to think about it. Chakotay does some Indian ritual to speak to his father. His dad instantly appears to him in a dream visioan and they're able to have a coherent conversations (so Indians are magic then? It's kind of insulting.) Ghost dad tells him that the baby is innocent, like the babies of women of their tribe raped by white men, so he should go after it. Neelix reports that a Talaxian convoy has offered help. The Doctor comes up with a plan to project holographic ships to fool the Kazon. Voyager comes across a Kazon ship with one of Seska's friends onboard. He reports that Seska is dead. Chakotay doesn't know if he should trust him. The Kazon is badly ill and would have died if Voyager had found him later. The Kazon guides them through Nistrim space. A Kazon ship shows up and attacks one area of Voyager but is easily driven away. Janeway meets with Suder. Suder is nervous and jittery and it doesn't go well. Janeway says she'll look at his proposal and he gets a bit angry that she hasn't said yes right away. The Doctor tries to make sense of a mysterious medical condition the Kazon is suffering from. Chakotay asks him whn every Kazon ship that attacks them aims at the same spot.

More Kazon attack the ship in the same way and Janeway says "it feels like we're being pecked to death by ducks!" Ducks would be better enemies than Kazon. Suder turns down food from Neelix. Voyager runs into a load of Kazon ships. They create false sensor echoes of Talaxian ships and B'Elanna and the Doctor project holograms of others. There's an okay battle scene (really DS9 does battle scenes much better, sorry for being a snob.) The Doctor is accidentally projected into space and screams in terror (why would he be programmed to do that?) The Kazon prisoner takes something out of his toenail. He injects himself with something that causes him to grow into a giant(!)...actually he just expldoes. And his quarters are next to Suder's. Things start to go wrong all over Voyager. Paris goes off in a shuttle to get the Talaxians but is possibly killed pretty quickly. Janeway is ready to self destruct Voyager but the self destruct isn't working (it was disabled by all those Kazon ships firing in the same place.) Culluh and Seska (she's allive!!!!!!!!) take the ship and Seska shows Chakotay his baby. Seska told Culluh Chakotay raped her. Culluh slaps Janeway when she asks what happens now. He makes a big sexist speech about women from the AQ being out of control. All of the crew are gathered up by the Kazon. The Doc turns himself off and they miss Suder because his quarters are all exploded. Culluh believes Tom's shuttle was destroyed but Seska wants to make sure (SHE'S TOO GOOD FOR HIM.) Culluh lands Voyager on some shitty volcanic planet and laughs evily. The crew are kicked off and left to live in this primative environment (kind of like Janeway and Chakotay last week.) The crew explore their new home and B'Elanna spots some cavemen (there's a CGI lizard thing too.) Voyager takes off.

It's the big cliffhanger! Will the crew get the ship back!? Yes, of course. Do they lose it in an exciting, believable way? Err, not really. The scene with ghost dad is not a good start. It's really obviously this is all a trap, like when the Kazon are all firing on one part of the ship and the prisoner has weird blood (exploding blood it turns out!) The battle scene is okay but you can't help but think Voyager deserved to lose for being so stupid. The cliffhanger is decent I guess, and we got to see the ship land in the opener and final so there's some mirroring for you, but I doubt anyone thought the show was going to be about the crew living on some shitty planet from now on.

SCORE: 6.5/10
 
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Basics: Part 2 - And now the conclusion. The crew are split into four teams exploring the planet. Neelix is one of the team leaders for some reason. He and Hogan find some bones outside a cave. Neelix say sit's a "do not distrub" sign but then tells Hogan to gather the bones. A monster kills Hogan (thanks Neelix!) right away because God forbid any recurring character stick around long enough to get to know them. Paris is still alive (no explanatioin) and being attacked by Kazon. He says "I don't have time for this!" three times and destroys their ship. Janeway tells everyone that Hogan will be the last one of them to die. She orders the crew to eat bugs. Seska tells the Doctor that the Kazon have taken the ship. He says he doesn't care but she wonders if he's lying. He tells her the baby isn't hers and Seska is upset knowing Culluh is the father (as anyone would be.) The Doctor activates himself after she leaves and tries to make plans to retake the ship. The computer tells him there's 89 Kazon and one Betazoid onboard, which is really sloppy writing considering he just talked to a Cardassian (and her half Kazon baby.) The Wildman baby is sick. Chakotay laments that he's the only Indian who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together but eventually succeeds by using the hair of women (the pervert.) Kes and Neelix are abducted by a caveman. Paris contacts the Talaxian convoy. Suder and the Doctor meet up. Suder is worried that he's going to have to kill some of the Kazon to retake the ship. The Doctor understands but tells him that sometimes violence is necessary. This is a good scene. Tuvok has made a bow and arrows because he used to teach archery. Neelix tries to defend Kes from the cavemen. Chaotay just strolls in and all the cavemen are scared because he's got tattoos I guess. The cavemen offer one of their women to Chakotay but he turns her down. They want to keep Kes and attack Chakotay and Neelix with spears but Tuvok saves them with his archery and they run and hide in one of the monster caves. Seska and Culluh discover Suder's first sabotage.

There's an earthquake and the cave Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix and Kes are in starts to cave-in. Janeway finds the cavemen outside the monster cave. Torres distracts the cavemen by throwing rocks at them and running away (she's the fastest runner! Like Gendry!) Chakotay and friends fight off the monster with spears. It's a pretty decent CGI monster for the time. Chakotay and Tuvok cave-in the entrance to trap the monster. This is all just padding, really. I meant it's all competent tv but who really cares about cavemen and a cave monster? Paris manages to contact the Doctor with his secret plan. Suder's had to kill a Kazon and is finding it tough. He rolls up in a ball. Clever Seska knows what's going on as usual. She's too good for Culluh. She confronts the Doctor and he says the great line "sticks and stones won't break my bones so you can imagine how I feel about words!" He takes credit for everything that's happened on the ship, including killing the Kazon. Seska disables him. A volcano goes off on the planet. The Talaxians start attacking Voyager. Chakotay saves a cavewoman from some lava. Again I don't know why the episode is spending so much time on befriending the cavemen when we're never going to see them again in ten minutes anyway. Suder (after listening to an inspiring message from the Doctor) slaughters a whole load of Kazon in Engineering and completes his part of Tom's plan. Sadly a fucking Kazon shoots him in the back because God forbid we let an actual good actor stay on the show even as a guest star. The ship overloads when it tries to fire on Tom's shuttle because Suder did something to the phasers. The Talaxians start beaming over (I wonder how many Talaxians were brutally murdered by Kazon?) Seska is killed by the phaser overload (BULLSHT) but Culluh survives and escapes with the baby (because they didn't have the balls to kill a baby and needed someone to look after it.) The cavemen stop the Wildman baby crying with their special caveman medicine. Well that's nice of them but Voyager is about to arrive anyway so the "sick baby" subplot was pointless. The crew return to the ship and Tuvok hopes Suder finds the peace in death he never had in life. Chuckle's pulls a sheet over Seska's dead body.

This is better than part 1 because the stuff on the ship with the Doctor and Suder is good and the Doctor and Seska have some nice scenes too. It's not better by much though, because all the stuff on the planet is just a waste of time. It's also the episode that started a lot of viewers hating Jeri Taylor. Michael Piller originally wanted Seska to survive and her baby to die (and Culluh I assume.) But Taylor (and Berman according to Memory Alpha) didn't want a baby to die (why) so Piller had to make it that the baby wasn't even Chakotay's so that it could go off with Culluh and Seska, an actual good character played by a good actress who would have greatly improved the show by staying on, died instead. Adding to that Piller wanted Suder to survive the episode but Taylor had no interest in the character so ordered him killed off, robbing us of future Brad Dourif guest appearances. Both these things really annoy me and are great exaples of Voyager getting it wrong! Even killing Hogan, to a lesser extent, pissed me off because it was so pointless and Voyager needs all the recurring characters it can get. Anyway this is an okay opener whatever.

SCORE: 7/10


Flashback - Neelix cooks for Tuvok in a typically annoying way. Voyager finds a rare gas they want to collect. Tuvok has weird flashbacks of dropping a child off a cliff and collapses in Sickbay. He can't remember this ever happened to him. Tuvok struggles to control his emotions doing a Vulcan Jenga thing in his quarters. Kes visits him and doesn't say much. We're ten minutes in and nothing has really happened yet. Tuvok mistakenly suggests watching out of cloaked Klingon ships and has another memory attack. The Doc thinks it's a repressed memory, which are deadly to Vulcans of course. The solution is usually mind melding with a family member and Janeway is the closest thing to one on the ship (Tuvok does mention "other Vulcans" in the crew.) They meld and finally the episode picks up a bit as Janeway finds herself on the Excelsior during Star Trek VI where Tuvok served under Captain Sulu (it's George Takei, folks!) They're fighting Klingons but then flashback to three days earlier where Rand (a wooden Grace Lee Whitney) accuses Tuvok of sucking up to Sulu by bringing him Vulcan tea. Sulu likes the tea. Praxis explodes and Sulu gets to say his "my GOD!" line from the movie again. They actually reuse some footage from the movie here I'm pretty sure. Tuvok then claims that "two days later" Kirk and McCoy were arrested when in the movie it was actually months later. Young Tuvok objected to Sulu violating orders by going on the rescue mission. Sulu tells him he's going to help his friends, let the regulations be damned.

They see a nebula that looks like the one Voyager encountered which makes Tuvok have another repression attack and break the meld. Janeway, for some reason, chooses to talk to Harry in an attempt to figure things out. Shows how much she thnks of Chakotay. Janeway finds that Sulu didn't note his rescue attempt in his logs. Kim wonders what it would have been like to live in the old days (if he watched Discovery he'd learn their ships were actually more advanced than Voyager!) Janway says Kirk and the rest would be booted out of Starfleet today. Tuvok and Janeway meld and once again return to the fight with the Klingons. He has a flashback to his bunkmate Valtine keeping him up at night (not like that!!!) Young Tuvok is a bit of a dick and talks about how humans want everyone to be like them. He only joined Starfleet because his parents pressured him to (the opposite of Spock!) and has decided to quit after this mission. Janeway knew Tuvok left Starfleet for over fifty years(!) and now she knows his reason. Tuvok tells her how he spent that fifty years raising a family and that made him appreciate that his parents had been right to send him to Starfleet and he had a lot to learn from humans. Kang contacts the Excelsior and trades veiled threats with Sulu. Sulu and young Tuvok come up with a plan to blow up the nebula to escape Kang (it won't blow up his ship.) Some different Klingons attack them anyway. Valtine's console explodes and he dies, despite being alive at the end of Star Trek VI as all TRUE TREK FANS KNOW. Tuvok has the falling child memory again when he touches the dying Valtine. Something goes wrong with the mind meld and Sulu notices Janeway. The flashbac to the wooden Rand memory and Tuvok has to nerve pinch her and steal her clothes for Janeway (this is all a bit silly.) In the real world the Doctor realises the memory Tuvok is having is fake or something and comes up with a way to destroy it. Valtine dies again and Tuvok's brain is nearly healed, but the memory virus (that's what the Doctor says it is) jumps to Janeway's brain now. The Doctor destroys the virus at last and explains that it was living in Valtine's brain disguised as a memory and it then jumped to Tuvok's brain. It repressed itself for years to hide. Tuvok says he's pleased to have been a part of Star Trek VI and Janeway says she is too though really wouldn't they both rather have been in 'The Trouble with Tribbles'?

So as I just hinted there, this it the 30th anniversary episode of Voyager. DS9's cast got to be inserted into an actual TOS episode and it was genuinely great both as a celebration of Star Trek and an episode in its own right. Voyager gets...Sulu. Just Sulu. I mean Takei is fine in the episode and it's nice to see some of STVI recreated, but it's nowhere near as fan as the DS9 episode was. The story itself is pretty average and takes a long time to get going. What is good, as usual, is the Janeway/Tuvok friendship. And we do learn quite a lot of Tuvok backstory. But I can't imagine anyone thought this was a better episdoe than 'Trials and Tribbulatons'.

SCORE: 6/10
 
Flashback would have been more interesting if it had been something more than a brain virus!
 
Didn't know this...

Brannon Braga originally wrote a scene in which Nyota Uhura, via viewscreen, provided some necessary plot points from the bridge of the USS Enterprise-A. Actress Nichelle Nichols declined her invitation to appear in the episode, however, due to the limitedness of her part. (Star Trek Monthly issue 18) Sulu actor George Takei referred to Uhura's part of the installment as "a nice little scene" and clarified, "She would have communicated with me, as Uhura to Tuvok, over the viewscreen. I pleaded with her on the phone to do it because it would have been wonderful to have her back as well. She felt the part did not do her justice, so she passed on doing it." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 9) Brannon Braga remarked, "I would have liked to have had Uhura, but we had to write […] her out. We couldn't make a deal with her." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 88) Partly due to the scene's deletion, the episode ended up being approximately five minutes too short, so two additional scenes were written to fill up the rest of the episode's duration: an extension of Tuvok's breakfast with Neelix, and the Keethera scene between Tuvok and Kes. (Star Trek: Communicator issue 108) The removal of the Uhura scene was done after 26 March, as evidenced by the cast list in the episode's final draft script, which includes Uhura among the episode's characters.
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Explains why the start of the episode drags so much (that Neelix/Tuvok scene goes on forever and the Kes scene is pointless.)
 
It’s a pity, but fair enough on her part. Why should she only be in 5 minutes when George Takei is in every other scene.
 
Currently watching TMP, is there a reason the enterprise never even tried to move out of the way of the big blue energy weapon?
 
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