Star Trek: Voyager (Season Two)

I've had the below in draft mode for awhile, and as I'll be wrapping up season 3 within the next few days, I figured it was high time to finish these least-to-most favorites of Voyager s2. I cribbed most of the plot descriptions from the wiki or the invaluable Trekcore, though I embellished or edited here and there. Let me at 'em!

26.

The crew finds aliens mentally connected to a computer that has created a being that feeds on their fear.

Aka the one where Michael McKean plays the killer clown. That might make a more definitive plot summary. Here is the progression of my notes from the notepad I keep exclusively for my Voyager-ings:

"Sort of a 'Return to Tomorrow' vibe here, maybe 'Wolf in the Fold.' Maybe not.

"Ok, kinda too much now.

"Okay, WTF."

It improves a little when they throw the Doctor into things, but nothing can really overcome the ill-advised full-on foray into wtf-dom. 

Early in the episode, when Tom is hanging out in Harry's quarters, he makes a comment on Voyager being a combat ship, not built for long voyages. This is rather puzzling given the name of the ship, isn't it?

Not to mention the comparatively palatial personal quarters surrounding them.

25.

A transporter accident merges Tuvok and Neelix into a new person, "Tuvix." Janeway must decide whether to allow this new entity to live or redistribute him back into her friends.

Commitment noted, but I mean, come on now. The guest actor (Tom Wright) does a good job with what is basically an impossible role in increasingly absurd circumstances. Like s1's "Cathexis" or "Faces", the implications of the fix to get everything back to normal suggest a sort of magic super-science beyond what the conceit of the series can comfortably accommodate.

"He also possesses Tuvok's irritating sense of intellectual superiority and Neelix's annoying ebullience. I would be very grateful to you if you would assign him some duty - any duty - somewhere else." - The Doctor 

24.

Chakotay encounters a Kazon youth who is on an initiation rite: to earn his name by killing an enemy or be killed in the attempt. 

Trekcore informs me that "this episode features the first of countless shuttles which Chakotay will lose over the next several months." I'll try and keep track of this, but you'd figure the loss of a single shuttle in the Delta Quadrant would be an irreplaceable tragedy. To learn Chakotay loses several all on his own is great. Someone stop this man from going to the shuttle bay! (I was watching Season 3's "Coda" over lunch today and in the opening he loses control of the shuttle he's piloting and crashes. Still going strong in s3!)

Technically, this isn't a bad episode, just as with the above, rather ill-advised. I'd wager this sort of story never need appear in the Trekverse ever again, yet each series seems to have its own version. Sometimes several. I'm not sure why. I don’t mind Chakotay, here, though, nor the kid, Kar (played by Trek vet Aron Eisenberg.) Mainly, it's just the Kazon, as well as the whole well-trod ground of the plot; set phasers to "Who gives a crap." 

Neelix, of all people, steals the show with his Columbo-esque negotiating at episode's end. I wish they'd played this side of his character up more rather than having him try to start a variety show every episode.

23.

Voyager encounters a Cardassian missile which Torres had reprogrammed for the Maquis, which was apparently drawn into the Delta Quadrant with them. The missile is malfunctioning and has aimed itself at a large civilian population. While Torres attempts to disable her work from within, Janeway plans to blow up Voyager in the missile's path.

I wonder about Janeway's willingness to blow up the ship here, but it's par for the Trek course. Never takes much for them to play the kamikaze card. I wonder what this is all about, actually? The side of Starfleet no one talks about.

Some bullet-points from my notebook:

- For a show set in the Delta Quadrant, there's an awful lot of Alpha Quadrant.

- Torres might out-Tin-Man "Tin Man" here with "Dreadnaught." There's a TNG episode "Tin Man" where the script falls in love with one particular character saying "Tin Man" over and over again. By the fourth or fifth time Torres says something like "Dreadnought doesn't like it" some character might've improved things by saying "Can you knock that the eff off please?" Extra points had it been Tuvok, with just a quick nerve pinch and Torres slumping to the floor, then jump-cut to blowing up Dreadnought in space, roll credits. 

- The name suggested to The Doctor in sick bay ("Greskrendtregk") works.

- When I first covered Voyager here in the blog, I mentioned a couple of the ongoing characters - like Naomi Wildman - but left out a whole bunch, like Naomi Wildman's mom. (Nancy Hower.)

- One of the 8 episodes of Voyager directed by LeVar Burton. 

- And one of the few with more than one countdown. I can't seem to find the right TV Tropes link, but you know what I mean: ship in crisis, technobabble, with either Majel Barrett, Sigourney Weaver, or some Blofeld-flunkie counting down until warp core breach/ shield penetration/ kaboom. Like I say, this is one of the few episodes with not just one but several - nice. The ultimate Trek episode would probably be 40 minutes of simultaneous, multi-sequenced countdowns with nothing but technobabble ("duratonium polyalloy!" yells someone) and Kirk fight scenes in-between, and maybe a senior bridge officer joystick-piloting the ship through some totally-unnavigable asteroid field or nebula. (With cuts of ridged-forehead-rage and someone in a Jefferies tube.)

22.

Paris and Neelix beam down to Planet Hell, search for supplies, bicker, bond over Neelix's jealousy issues with Kes, then care for a baby alien until its mother returns for it. 

I don't recall too much about this one besides being annoyed to discover I'd be spending my lunch hour with Neelix's goddamn jealousy issues. I did grade it, though, which is how I know where to place it in the countdown.

21.

Seska and the Kazon-Nistrim take control of Voyager and maroon its crew on a primitive planet.

I hate reviewing single eps of 2-parters. Double albums are not EPs are not single albums are not concept albums, etc. It's not fair to evaluate these things as single episodes when they're not designed to be single episodes. Except: they are, I guess. I have an easier time evaluating it as a season-ending cliffhanger, though, and as such, "Basics pt. 1" is decent. But two things work against it: (1) The Kazon - I mean, I get that they've been setting this up all season long but just who the hell cares. And (2) Consider the amount of screentime saying “Alpha team, Beta Team,” or "search pattern delta theta" etc. As well as the amount of time the Kazon spend landing Voyager. It reminded me of that old Tek Jansen sketch where he just deploys his landing struts for the whole sketch. 

Anyway, the Kazon. Here we are. Gosh I wonder if the crew'll get Voyager back. Hopefully by means of eradicating the Kazon from the show once and for all. Dare to dream.

20.

Tuvok and Janeway send Paris undercover as a defector, but Neelix's journalistic meddling threatens to blow the scheme.

A few episodes before this one, Paris begins to act out against Chakotay, and it's so jarring and uninteresting that I should have suspected it was a plot of some kind. When the "reveal" happened, I had to throw out 80% of the notes I took for this episode, as they were mainly about how the episodes that feature Tom's "bad boy"ness as a plot point irritate me. (Still true - although there are at least two notable exceptions in later seasons - but the reveal made my irritation less specific to "Investigations.") 

Chakotay is angry to discover not only has he once again failed to suss out a traitor / plot but his inability to do so has actually been anticipated and exploited. Though of course they put it a different way to him. (Manages not to lose a shuttlecraft, though.)

Something from my notes that makes little sense to me in retrospect: If overdubbed with “Somebody Save Me” by Cinderella on loop, this episode would be great, though. Why that song? Why looped? And for the whole episode? I don't remember the whys and wherefores of this joke at all.

19.

Voyager encounters a spatial anomaly which distorts the ship from the inside out. When Janeway comes into contact with it, she is rendered incoherent. Chakotay takes command and must decide whether to follow Torres or Tuvok's conflicting ideas for saving the ship.

This one is kind of a huge mess by the end, where none of the awkward interactions nor the yelling nor B'Elanna's line reads nor the script's curious need to reintroduce the idea of "we may die and I love you" from the ground up actually add up to much. It starts well, though, and the alien mystery aspect of it all certainly comes through. Even if I don't love this episode, the series would have been well-served to make something like it its baseline for conveying Delta-Quadrant-je-ne-sais-quoi: all alien species should be at least this... well, alien, I guess.

18.

Chakotay's away team finds a marking very similar to one used by Chakotay's own tribe. When he experiences flashbacks from his own youth and decides to investigate, he meets an alien who claims that Chakotay's tribe were seeded on Earth by a group of space faring wanderers.

Is Chakotay's Ancient Rubber People heritage used any more often or any more brazenly than Spock’s or Worf’s respective alien heritage? Probably not, but sometimes it feels that way sometimes. And usually if it's a Chakotay-centric episode that involves his heritage, the episode is written by Jeri Taylor, one of the co-creators of the whole series. There is undoubtedly a story here, and I should probably have googled all the interviews with both Robert Beltran and with Jeri Taylor to summarize the pertinent info for you. But! I did not. 

I even picked up her ST:V novels (one of which seems to incorporate the plot of "Tattoo") but was unable to get too far in either. This isn't due to her writing or anything - I have this problem with 99% of all Trek novels. Or the comics. Except the old Gold Key ones. Why is this? God only knows.

For as often as this sort of alien-precedent thing happens in the Trekverse, though, going back to "The Paradise Syndrome" from TOS but also from TNG and elsewhere, everyone always seems so surprised. Does no one ever update the computer banks?

Anyway, this particular application of this particular Trek-trope is a real stretch, both the from-Delta-to-Alpha-Quadrant aspect of it and the continuity of tattoo design over millennia. Neither is a dealbreaker, though - what really skews this episode downward is the last ten minutes. The reunion is so awkwardly handled that it undermines what's added to Chakotay's origin story.

"I don’t have a life – I have a program."

I hear you, Doc.

The Doc’s subplot is fun, as is the reveal that it was all a prank by Kes. Kind of an 80s movie prank, though, i.e. needlessly dangerous. All the better!

17.

When a group of Kazon under Seska's influence lead a raid on Voyager to steal technology, Chakotay steals a shuttle and goes off in pursuit. (Uh-oh.) He is taken captive and tortured by Seska before Voyager rescues him. Seska leaves him a message beacon to inform him that she's impregnated herself with his DNA.

May I just say I’m not huge fan of this kind of space-battle stuff in Trek? So rarely is it handled in what any kind of space battle might actually look like; we almost always get 19th century broadsides in space. I don't mean to fault Voyager for not being the Eick/Moore Battlestar Galactica, and I'm hardly the first person to bring it up, but yeah, sometimes it's like, why even do this? Without Kirk/ Khan, I mean. If you're going to do it, you need Kirk and Khan. Without it, you've just got a lot of "Pattern Omega Three!" non-excitement.

In theory I like the idea of a Kazon-piracy-irritant as a recurring motif. But I just don’t like the Kazon. (Have I mentioned this?) I further don't like silly plot volleyballs like Chakotay's love child with the resistance or whatever. I mean, is this why anyone watches Star Trek? I know they were going for something different (while remaining almost furiously the same) but maybe they should have just filled up the DQ with Borg and made them blast their way through and to hell with it.

16.

Paris attempts to travel in a shuttle at Warp 10 and successfully breaks the barrier (infinite velocity or whatever it is), but then he begins to mutate into an amphibian and his tongue falls out. Though the Doctor devises a treatment, Paris kidnaps Janeway and escapes. She is transformed as well, and they manage to breed offspring before being rescued and changed back to human.

Ewww...

This episode is a solid mix of over-the-top clichés ("When I was a boy, my father told me I was special..." (death gasp) "Tell him I did it! Tell him...") and really wild and gross ideas like Tom and the Captain having mutated alien sex and breeding little alligator babies. The audacity works much better here than it does in "The Thaw." Sometimes Voyager really "goes there."

Good stuff from the Doc in this episode. As per usual.

15.

Kes enters the Ocampan equivalent of going into heat and becomes desperate to have a child. While she tries to decide whether she wants to mate with Neelix, Janeway and Chakotay attempt to fight off the swarm of aliens which triggered Kes' condition and discuss the hazards of crew fraternization.

I like the set-up with Kes entering her Ocampan blood fever inside the ship while outside, the aliens are trying to bang Voyager itself. (Gets a little weird. "Roll over and vent plasma residue." Ewww.) 

One thing, though - okay, so Ocampa don't live long and Kes is not quite 2 yet. But if she and Neelix haven’t been mating (ewww again) this whole time, how exactly are they in a relationship? Perhaps I missed something, but the topic is clumsily explored – as is sometimes the case with Trek and sex.

14.

Voyager encounters an array similar to the one which stranded them in the Delta Quadrant, and discovers long-lived Ocampa living on it. One of them (Gary Graham) teaches Kes to unlock her psychic potential and puts the Caretaker's companion in touch with the ship, but she is bent on destroying it.

Written by Stephen King! Okay not really, but plenty of King-isms, like this psychic child (so to speak) -

and this blood dripping from the rafters (which didn't come across too well in these screencaps, my apologies.)

Or maybe it was written by Chris Claremont.

"Hear me, X-Men - no longer am I the woman you once knew!"

My lame attempts at humor aside, this one was written by Anthony Williams and Brannon Braga. There's little new ground broken here - and perhaps it was a missed opportunity to break some - but nevertheless, I enjoyed it. What was the rationale for keeping this back to the 10th ep of s2, I wonder? Seems like it could have been better placed. I bet the answer lies in the episode's commentary track or season special features.

13. 

After a Kazon attack, Chakotay proposes that Janeway ally Voyager with one of the Kazon sects for protection. She reluctantly opens negotiations, then makes contact with the Trabe, a historical enemy of the Kazon, now being persecuted by them.

This might have happened straight away with the Kazon and made them a tad less Trek-generic, but Jeri Taylor sketches out the prime directive pretty well. Then again, so what? Is it really compelling drama or philosophy? I suppose the question of what principles you live by when so far from their legal jurisdiction is interesting enough, but I was under the impression Earth folk of the 24th century Trekverse had that particular ethical knot well-untied.

And since when are strategic alliances contrary to Starfleet principles? You know, I don't know why I rated this one as highly as I did. I suppose I didn't hate it, but I'll put an asterisk next to it and when I do the great Voyager re-watch of 2030, I'll revisit this.

At some point someone says "come running like a Calogian dog" or something like that. I meant to keep track of these things but kept missing them and so it went.

12.

Voyager encounters a race of robots who do not have the ability to reproduce themselves. When Janeway refuses to let Torres build a prototype for them, the robots capture her and force her assistance.

Written by TV and combat vet Nicholas Corea and directed by Jonathan Frakes (one of 3 he did for Voyager), this one takes some fun twists and turns. The whole Robot War might've made a more intriguing conflict to get caught up in instead of the Kazon. I know this ship sailed long ago and here I am at a dock that no longer exists shouting irrelevancies at the horizon, but just saying.

Nice visual design throughout - starting with a bit of Robocop and ending with a more Revenge of Buck Rogers look.

11.

Voyager encounters a floating truck in space and finds a number of human abductees from Earth circa 1937, including Amelia Earhart. They learn that the humans overthrew their captors on the planet and have established a civilization which Voyager's crew is invited to join.

Season 2's premiere isn't the greatest episode, but it's the kind of Trek I'll always enjoy. Even if things get a tad overcomplicated with the Briori and their whole backstory. I say this even though their backstory is no more or less complicated than any dozen similar set-ups I could point to in TOS or elsewhere. Still.

They make a big point of landing the ship - which, it occurs to me just now, happens again in the season finale, so nice framing, there - which always makes me roll my eyes, but at least it has a small visual parallel with The Canary.

Amelia Earhart, American spy! Max Allan Collins would be proud.

10.

Stranded with an incurable virus, Janeway and Chakotay begin to make a new life together on a lush planet. Meanwhile, the crew pressures Tuvok to make contact with the Vidiians in the hope that they can cure the senior officers.

It's written by Jeri Taylor so of course it explores the romantic side of Chakotay and how that plays out in his relationship with the Captain. Someone out there has undoubtedly done the legwork on this Taylor/ Chakotay thing and I look forward to reading it! If it's you - or you know where to point me - please let me know in the comments. 

She handles it well.

They're just going to leave all this stuff there, though? Really? Aren't they far enough away from home where every little thing counts?

Other aspects of the episode (such as Harry's brief insurrection) are less convincing. With a few tweaks, this would’ve made a classier season finale than the cliffhanger one. 

"Tuvok never meant to cause you any sorrow..."

Loved seeing Dr. Pal reunited with Schmullus. We haven't got to the episode they meet yet in this countdown, but this was a nice callback to it.

9.

aka

Remo Williams: The Adventure Continues (Without Remo)

Janeway is shot during an away mission and taken in by Caylem, a man who mistakes her for his daughter. While Voyager attempts to negotiate with the aliens for the release from prison of the rest of the away team, Janeway leads a raid on the prison with Caylem's help and frees her crew.

Kind of a sweet little story of paternal grief and loss, with some defining character moments from Janeway. Not much to say about it really, besides that. The story is a tad predictable, but the performances are quite sympathetic. Kind of "a very special episode of Voyager" sort of deal, the kind that would have Ruth's music from "Shore Leave" or Leila's from "This Side of Paradise" playing over most of it if it were TOS.

It's a shame there's no Fred Ward but can't have everything.

8.

Voyager inadvertently frees a member of the Q continuum from confinement within an asteroid, where he was placed to prevent himself from committing suicide. Q appears and Janeway holds a hearing to determine whether or not the other Q will be permitted to remain free and kill himself if he wishes.

I'm probably ranking this one too high. Truth is, I like parts of it - or what parts of it hint at, let's say, without putting into so many words - but overall it might not be the most satisfying story. Partly because the Q themselves aren't the most satisfying in Voyager. This is probably the only one of their appearances that deepens the existing Continuum file (not counting the Civil War triggered by this episode's events in Season 3) but they're one of those omnipotent sideroads of the Trekverse that should have been used more sparingly. They just never click for me in Voyager. 

Not a deal-breaker, just superfluous. (Riker always seemed like he was just hanging around, with his uniform in the car, ready to be shoehorned into any episode at a moment's notice.)

Kind of interesting to go to the Continuum, I guess, but it's a bit overdone. Can the franchise absorb another examination of capital punishment/ suicide? You betcha'. Can/ should Voyager? Sure. What doesn't work? I don't know, man. Except these stories are as tough to pull off as articulating the POV of someone/thing omnipotent while not actually being omnipotent. Mainly, tho, this conforms to the wonkiest of Trel-trial episodes ("Measure of a Man," "Devil's Due," "Court Martial," "Wolf in the Fold," so many others.) The legality/ selective-reasoning-and-or-tech is always so arbitrary.

7.

Upon entering Bothan space, the crew begins to see hallucinations which turn out to be the work of a renegade Bothan psionic. One by one - except Kes, who proves resistant, and the Doctor - they fall into a catatonic state.

The Bothans are interesting, right? Not sure how much they appear from here on out, or even if they come back at all, but there's potential there. 

I liked this one. It's a good Janeway episode, even if it's Kes who saves the day - quite grossly.

I've a soft spot for these crew-hallucinate-their-inner-fears sort of deals. Funny how often that happens to Starfleet folk, isn't it? Often enough where I'm sure it's specifically covered at the Academy. (Along with "Don't trust Starfleet Admirals.")

6.

On a nearly-destroyed Voyager where he has freedom to move about, the Doctor is told that he is in fact Louis Zimmerman, creator of the Emergency Medical Hologram, and has become trapped in a holodeck simulation he was running. Kes is his wife, and Reginald Barclay his programmer. Eventually the real Chakotay is projected into the simulation to inform the Doctor that it is Voyager's holodeck which is malfunctioning, and the Doctor will be destroyed if he can't stop the program.

Another set-up I enjoy, this Total Recall sort of deal. I like that Chakotay gets the Dr. Edgmar part. I guess that makes the Doctor Quaid and Kes Sharon Stone. Even better. 

First appearance of Barclay in Voyager.

Neelix in Freud Mystery Theater: Thwart the Death Drive!

Some great twists in this one. Although it's something of a cheat for the ship to always have an extra warp core - or be able to replace/ repair one. Not to sound like a broken record, but these missed opportunities add up. Not fatally. Actually, everytime I find myself thinking "here's where Voyager could have actually explored alien space/ took the concept to interesting dramatic terrain" I think what I'm thinking of is the Eick/Moore Battlestar Galactica. Which would not be appropriate in the Berman Trek era, even for a show in the Delta Quadrant. Nevertheless, BSG is almost - in ways I can not articulate at present but maybe over the course of this re-watch - a specific response to specific roads not taken in Voyager.

5.

Harry awakens to find himself in San Francisco, living with his fiancé, never having been assigned to Voyager. A little investigation reveals that a meddling alien took him out of his appropriate time stream, so he struggles to get back with the help of Tom Paris, who in this reality remained a criminal.

After all the Harry-Kim-is-my-best-goddamn-friend shenanigans of s1, the writers scaled it back a little bit in s2. The audience still gets plenty of Harry-Kim time, most notably with this episode. As with the above entries, I'm a sucker for this type of story. Perhaps the show/ franchise went (or still goes) to this everything-you-thought-was-real-is-not well a few too many times, but I'm of the opinion this sort of thing is necessary: anytime you lock up actors into a long-running show/ grueling production schedule, this is the equivalent of giving them time off. 

Two quick things:

- Remember the movie Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid? There are more recent examples than that (such as episodes of BSG where Adama leafs through old photo albums), but it's a funny thing when shows set in the future (where people fly at warp speed and have replicators and such) have their characters reflect on life back on Earth or their grandparents and suddenly they're looking at black and white photos or talking about farmers. This always cracks me up - not that either wouldn't exist centuries from now or anything, but it seems like the age-differential is just being transposed from a 20th century viewpoint. It's evident in this episode, as well, in some of the reverie.

- I like that the alien (Cosimo) can just take time off work to watch after Harry (and only very loosely at that) and maintain this little pocket universe. Maybe he's just a bored unnamed-ian. "We exist in what you would call a temporal inversion fold in the space-time matrix." Oh! That explains it.

I don't criticize; I like the mystery of Cosimo's species, even if it's all just flimsy cover for a Harry's-dream sort of episode.

4.

An unstable Maquis crewmember murders a Starfleet engineer. When an investigation points to the perpetrator, Tuvok attempts to help him gain control of his emotions via a mind meld, but is caught in the Betazoid's dark thoughts to the extent that he becomes a risk to the crew himself.

Brad Dourif, ladies and gentlemen!

Although it wreaks havoc with established canon (i.e. "insanity is cured" except when it isn't), who cares? Two great performance from Brad Dourif and Tim Russ, and a good, thoughtful script. It's structured a bit like a Law and Order episode before things get weird, which I like; the viewer could be lulled into thinking a whole different episode is going to unfold and then it becomes something genuinely surprising. 

Some fan service. Had I directed this episode, this sequence might have been repeated a few times, Threat Level Midnight style.

I can just hear the mid-80s voiceover guy advertising this one: "To-night on Voyager: Tuvok must mind-meld... with a killer!"

“If people want to take off their clothes and chase one another, well, it certainly couldn’t hurt morale around here.”

3.

While Janeway opens a dialogue with an alien race, Tuvok's shuttle crashes on one of their moons, where he encounters a group of children who have apparently been left as sacrifices to an unseen menace. He tries to protect them, but learns that they are not what they seem.

One of the Tuvok side-adventure episodes. (He even rescues the shuttle! Cut to a pic-I-couldn't-quite-get of Chakotay looking disgruntled.) I love this one - the twist is genuinely surprising, and Tim Russ has good chemistry with the kid actors. It might be a little hokey in spots. So's Star Trek, though, so climb off it.

Not much to say, really - apologies for the dearth of analysis. I don't want to give away the twist. Feel free to do so in the comments, though. Tuvok's Vulcan lullaby is very logical.

2.

Voyager rescues a critically ill Vidiian woman who is given a holographic body by the Doctor while he treats her. They fall in love, but the woman must return to her diseased-ravaged body, and she tries to sabotage the Doctor's work because she thinks death would be preferable to such an existence.

Here's an episode that rests almost entirely on the performance of its guest star (Susan Diol as Denara Pel) and her interaction with the Doctor. It's a complex relationship, and each step of the way, both actors explore a surprising range of emotion. Above and beyond work from both Diol and Picardo. The episode ends on a subtle note, with the Doctor and Denara waltzing, with no easy resolution, just a little more time together. It's the type of ending that trusts the viewer to come to his or her own emotional reconciliation - if any. Very true to life but over the top and theatrical at the same time. I love it.

Well done, Schmullus. (Denara's name for The Doctor.) 

The Paris/ Chakotay subplot, while explained elsewhere, sits uneasily with the Doc main plot. If it wasn't here, I'd probably swap this one with the next one so it would be my favorite. But it is, so while 90% of this episode is perfectly done, there's 10% that annoyingly intrudes.

1.

Voyager encounters a divergence field and splits into two identical ships, one damaged and one not. Janeway must work together with her counterpart from the other Voyager or both ships will be destroyed, if not by the anomaly then by the Vidiians.

Okay, so, maybe we've seen this kind of thing in Trek before. Then again, have we? Infant mortality, major character dies only to be replaced by his (exact) duplicate from another universe? The actions of the ship out of slight phase with its duplicate causing mass destruction? (Okay, that we definitely have.) It's all very Trek-worthy stuff. Most of the Best Voyager Episodes lists out there have it in the top 10 or 15 and deservedly so. 

"In that Kent State experiment, they were able to duplicate normal matter, but when they tried to duplicate antimatter particles, the experiment failed. "

Nice little Search for Spock sequence here.

~

So there we have it. Another season in the can! Season 2 was the last to feature Michael Piller as showrunner, although he and his son continued to contribute script notes for the rest of the series. 

Until next time.