Star Trek: Voyager (Season Seven)

I had some doubts along the way that we'd actually get here, but! Here we are. 

Voyager's last season aired from October of 2000 to May 2001. Were you watching? I wasn't. I think the only things I was watching regularly week-to-week in that time period were Dawson's and SNL. 

There'll be at least one more post in this VOY series, then that may be it for Trek-blogs for awhile. Or maybe not. Originally I'd planned to start an immediate Enterprise season-by-season project. It'd be cool to do one of these season-by-season re-rankings for any of the other Treks, really, with the exception of TOS. (There's no such as "rewatch" with TOS - it's an ongoing watch - and I don't have much to add to any of those.) But they take forever.

For now let's just focus on the task at hand, and a-Voyager-ing let us go.

23.

Q leaves his son (Q2) on Voyager to learn from the crew.

Nope. The idea of even engaging with this annoys me. I don't know Voyager felt the need to go back to the Q well after insert-last-Q-episode-ever events, but here's another diminishing return for a pretty well-diminished-concept.

22.

Prisoners are brought onto Voyager from a damaged alien vessel, and the crew must deliver them to their destination – for execution. Seven's nanoprobes are used to help heal a prisoner.

Where have I seen this guy before? (Answer: oh, it's Jeff Kober, from China Beach and elsewhere.) Where have we seen this episode before? Haven't they already done this on the show? Or am I just thinking of that TNG one from one of the earlier seasons?

Capital punishment stories are always a little awkward for me. Yedig doesn't persuade me. Is he meant to? Starts a little on the broad side and gets extensively broader. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Yedig had been a liberal reformer of some kind? 

It's not terrible, and there are some issues raised worth examining via  Trek lens. Particularly the Clockwork Orange-ness of the nanoprobes. What exactly do they do? how can they restore someone's sense of empathy and moral compass when they're designed to suppress that in assimilated drones? I'm not knocking the idea - I think it could've been much more interestingly explored than what we got here. 

21.

In the future where it took Voyager 23 years to get home, Admiral Janeway devises a plan to alter history. As the crew enters a final showdown with the Borg, the two Janeways implement a risky plan to take out one of the six Borg Transwarp Hubs in the galaxy and simultaneously cross the transwarp threshold to get home.

Any Trek finale is getting in the ring with "All Good Things." (I'm just skipping over "Turnabout Intruder" and "The Counter-Clock Incident," neither of which were specifically crafted to be series finales.) I thought the DS9 finale was pretty good, although I only ever watched the first and last season and a handful of episodes in-between so maybe I'm not the one to say. But it seemed to do its job. Finales have to exemplify the spirit of all that came before, wrap up any long-running storylines, elevate everyone in the cast, and send things off in style. I can forgive the shortcomings of any finale that hits these marks, even if I don't like them. 

"Endgame" isn't that finale. They opted for a retread of "All Good Things", right down to Tuvok's degenerative brain disease and the time displacement/ multiple Janeways. And not a very animated one at that. Worse, it hits so many cliches (the birth, the big 'splosions, the inexplicable new romance - Seven and Chakotay - yadda yadda) rather than trust in the show and cast's innate qualities. You know the scene in Bring It On where the girls realize their dance routine is identical to the one that just wowed the crowd, but they do it anyway, satisfying no one? That's "Endgame."

Another thing that gets me: Janeway's (and Trek time travel) inconsistencies re: moral imperatives, the timeline, and Borg are something else. Definitely not the note you want to hit on the way out the door. 

There are things I like. Harry Kim as Captain of the USS Rhode Island? Awesome. And giving him the redemptive moment of having been the one to correctly guess the way home is a nice touch, too. I like the return of Alice Krige, even if she's not given much to work with. The transwarp conduit is... well, it looks cool. But the assimilation-infection-back-up plan: I can't believe they still talk about this. Like the cloaking device, surely the Borg have adapted by now; Starfleet talks about this all the time. Are you telling me an enemy who adapts to phaser frequencies within thirty seconds can somehow remain oblivious to the danger of this plan over years and years and years of its being tried? Trek can be so weird about things like that - or having some big fuck-off ship appear like we're all supposed to be impressed or something. Always blown up with a single torpedo. Who makes these decisions?

Also: Janeway didn't even try to beam/ rescue Admiral Janeway. This is at least the 2nd alternate Janeway she's let die, geez.

20.

Ex-Maquis crew members are attacked after a data stream arrives from Starfleet.

A little late in the show to be doing this episode. Maybe the Maquis and the Kazon can get together and pool their resources into a concept I care an iota about; they'd need to. Not a bad episode but I struggled to remain interested in watching it. I liked the movie theater stuff, that's about it.

19.

Voyager's hologram technology, which Janeway had previously donated to the Hirogen, has been modified to make the holographic "prey" more cunning, enabling the hologram characters to rebel against their new masters.

Titlewise, we get "Flesh and Blood" and "Body and Soul" in the same season. Seems a little lazy. Couldn't anyone come up with anything else? I always wonder with these things if it's a writer's-union sort of thing, like to do so engages machinery that is the exact opposite of a quick two-second fix. 

I suppose your reaction to this one all depends what you think of this all-holograms-working-together sort of thing. And whether this season can support 2 two-parters that seem born of recycling costumes. Myself, I think the former is strained or doesn't realize itself well enough - again, BSG comes to mind as the road better taken - and I do not for the latter. The dilemma for Janeway isn't really apt: the holograms are who they are because of the Hirogen's adjustments, not because they shared the technology. The heavy sense of responsibility she feels is a little too forced. Obviously I see what they're going for (and it's an exploration very much in the Trek tradition, all the way back to Kirk's "serpents for the garden of Eden" poetics at the end of "A Private Little War") but it doesn't land with me here.

18.

 

Janeway, B'Elanna and Tuvok are assimilated by the Borg while attempting to save the group of drones who have developed individuality.

I covered this one last time but worth a mention here as well. I apologize for my lack of consistency with the two-parters I condense into one entry and the ones I treat separately.

For a story that ends with the Borg Civil War, which just kind of fades into the background of s7 after this episode, and features the Borg Queen destroying several of her own ships, and Tuvok getting assimilated, or whatever-you-like, it sure feels like we've seen all this before. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but there's just an aura of been-there-done-that to all we see. The tete-a-tete between Janeway and the Borg Queen has its moments, as do some of the moments between Seven and Axum (played by Mark Deakins, who was in Insurrection). 

The production design choices re: the Borg get-ups are interesting. Cool sub-processor effect on B'Elanna's voice but why not the others?  

17.

 

When her cortical implant malfunctions, Seven of Nine needs a life-saving transplant.

The Delta Flyer, so recently offered up as a sacrifice in "Unimatrix Zero" is replicated and back in action. Like many Voyager watchers, I've poked some fun at Chakotay's losing so many shuttles over the years, or their having an inconsistent approach with what they can or can't replicate. Mostly that's a pretty mild offense - there are "magic" elements of Trek, and the replicator is certainly one of them. That said, it might've helped the show a tad more had shuttles and Delta Flyers been harder to come by.

Icheb for the win this whole episode. Touching ending. I think there was definitely an element of awkward men and women working out adolescent issues in some aspects of Berman-era Trek. In thoughtful if sometimes clunky ways. Overall positive. It's a nice counterpoint to the other trends of 90s programming, i.e. a general slide then spike towards tortureporn and nihilism. Imperfection(s), indeed.

16.

Now married to Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres discovers she is pregnant. The Doctor tells her to expect a daughter; but B'Elanna's unresolved fear of the childhood traumas, which she suffered as a part-Klingon girl growing up among humans, makes her determined to remove her child's Klingon DNA.

Here's the bulletpoints from my now-retired Voyager notepad:

- Klingons have a 30 week pregnancy. I'm enough of a nerd to want to check that against any/ all other references, but not enough of one to actually do the legwork. Something to shoot for!

- The flashbacks don't quite deliver the Lost/Watchmen effect here. Like the earlier Tuvok one. (I can't recall the name offhand, the one with Tank Girl.) 

- Tom Paris has a toaster? I'm not surprised.

- Kind of an uncomfortabe one. But an honest attempt, at least, to deal with the mixed (ahem) legacy of half-human hybrids in Trek and their analogs in the non-trek (i.e. real) world. Also, the well, whiteness of the franchise, while staying within the ideological framework of the show. 

- The only problem is it feels a bit of a regression for B'Elanna's character. Much like Harry with "Nightingale," I had a sort of paternal reaction, like I thought it was a cruel use of the character just to put the (admittedly worthwhile) issue on display. It didn't feel developed enough. The flashbacks like I say were integrated rather awkwardly, not as effective as they could have been.

- I do like very much the Doc's being chosen as the godfather.

15.

 

Harry Kim takes command of an alien ship that has lost its officers in an attack.

We've heard all of this before, right down to Tom and Harry in the corridor. Little late in this show for this type of episode/ Harry-arc. But this would've made a fine transition-Harry-out-of-perpetual-ensign episode back in s3 or s4. In a way, there's part of me that responded to this episode in an almost offended way, like it's tough to see Harry keep getting treated like this. Ridiculous I know.

Ron Glass!

Poor Icheb. Poor Harry. (Icheb's arc is the fun part of the episode. Although I kind of enjoy most of the Nightingale story, too.)

Why is the cloak so important? We saw the A's firing on it, pre-credits. I must've missed something.

14.

 

Seven practices her social skills on the holodeck.

Perfectly fine, but as with "Nightingale," a little late in the series for this type of thing. Some more fun stuff from Icheb. If I were in charge of Paramount, I'd have made 3 or 4 Icheb movies by now. With Neelix. Man that'd piss people off - but they'd all be awesome, so everyone would begrudgingly admit I was right. And I'd be loaded. 

Sorry, had some trouble disengaging my holodeck program from interfering with my duties, there. Should be fine now.

13.

 

The crew of Voyager enters the Delta Flyer in a sub-warp race, crewed by Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, and events conspire to encourage Tom to propose to her.

Mostly fine, although I personally found the juxtaposition of relationship-race stuff with flying-the-race stuff to be a little pat. Harmless enough - perhaps the genre (racing drama) demands the car vs. betty dynamic, I don't know, along with the cheating-mustachioced-villain. 

The race itself could have been more dazzling. The premise is in never in any danger of being over-exploited; they charted a rather bland-but-safe passage right through. Rather disappointing, that, but I suppose not everything has to be a gamechanger. It speaks to the difficulty of the "hotshot pilot" scenes in Trek. It just never really works. Piloting shuttlecrafts and starships is just never exciting the way the scripts want it to be. 

12.

 

A hologram of Reginald Barclay is sent to Voyager, supposedly to implement a dangerous plan to bring them home; but the hologram has been tampered with by some Ferengi, who are trying to steal valuable Borg nanoprobes from Seven of Nine.

Maybe too much Barclay, now, especially with Troi always combined with him. 

But, a good variation of the concept, and Schultz was a fun character actor who chewed scenery well. Picardo and he were well-matched onscreen. 

11.

Voyager encounters an ancient Klingon battlecruiser. The Klingons aboard it had set out long ago to find their savior, and they believe it to be Tom and B'Elanna's unborn child.
More Alpha Quadrant.

More bulletpoints:

- 2nd episode where the shyuttle cargo bay is converted (200 mouths to feed. That replicator is getting a workout.)

- Neelix and Tuvok: the spin-off Odd Couple reboot-gold that never happened.

- I'm a sucker for this type of story. I'm probably overranking it.

- When challenged to a death match, with a Klingon or otherwise, you always accept.
That training montage could have really used some more montage-appropriate music. VOY never went off-model like that, though, and it would've been odd for them do suddenly do so in s7. Still! You're the best! A-ROUND! (insert Klingon for the rest)

- Nehret: magic hybrid stem cells! Always with the magic blood in these things. I suppose that was a trope long before Star Trek or 20th century sci-fi altogether.

- Wouldn't the Klingons demand Tom and B'Elanna stay with them? And then Tom and B'Elanna would be elevated as royalty or protected persons or something? Wouldn't mind a sequel where their daughter-to-be seeks these guys out. With Neelix. And Icheb. And Tuvok and Old Harry Kim, who's still an ensign.

10.

The crew is sent on its first mission by Starfleet in nearly seven years: to find a lost probe sent by Earth in the 21st century that has ended up in the Delta Quadrant.

Definitely a bit of a John Carpenter homage with this one. And a successful enough one, I think. Also a TWOK/ Botany Bay vbe.

Fun set-up. Not a bad version of this sort of thing. All too true of a wrap-up at the end.

9.

While visiting the planet Ledos, Seven and Chakotay crash through an energy barrier. The two are stranded in the jungle with primitive humanoids, who take the pair in and care for Chakotay's injuries. To rejoin Voyager, he and Seven have to disable the energy barrier.

Chakotay loses a shuttle! And he and 7 are paired so soon after 7's Chakotay-kissing-practice on the holodeck. Pretty good. Some might think it gets a little preachy. Maybe so - I thought it was mostly uncontroversial stuff. The ending would've worked a little better against a waves backdrop, like leaving the island's beauty.

Tom's whole subplot with the driving test: a shameless pitch to their fanbase/ demographic. But, hardly the first of those in either Trek or TV history, nor the last.

8.

During an emergency on a mission, The Doctor is forced to upload his program into Seven of Nine's Borg implants, allowing him to experience real sensations for the first time.
Great Picardo impersonation from Jeri Ryan.

Why do aliens say 'the Delta Quadrant'? I guess the answer is simply the universal translator. In a way it's an elegant solution: no matter what people call their own worlds, the universal translator translate it all into a grid of language (especially with regard to planetary systems and names). It's by no means perfect, though, or really that comprehensible. These are all Captain-Obvious statements to make to any Trek fan, of course. 

A better question is: why are there no cameras in the brig?

This could have went somewhere a bit more with the attraction to the lady - also, who IS that lady? It's Megan Gallagher, another alum (like Picardo) of China Beach. How come Voyager never got Dana Delaney?

Is Picardo just employing actor-ly mannerisms in his performance of the Doctor, easily teachable to Ryan or anyone else, the way a cartoonist's style can be taught as an in-house style?

Or perhaps Ryan is just a master impressionist, which is the likelier case - we've seen her do many different characters already on the show.

I'm not 100% up on her post-VOY career, but my impression is that those types of talents have perhaps been squandered. Even in VOY episodes I'm not crazy about (like the one where she splits into different people) it's easy to see she had a talent for this sort of thing. She would've worked well on a show like Dollhouse. Hindsight. 

I'm skipping over the Pon Farr stuff. While a good callback, it seemed like kind of a letdown. Does Tuvok really need to be persuaded of the logic of utilizing the holodeck to avoid his own death from sexual frustration? 

7.

 

Voyager is pulled into a void, where the ships that have become trapped attack each other for food and resources.

This is another one I remember well from my insomnia Voyager watching way back when. It struck me then as a successful utilization of the concept, and so it strikes me now. Interesting, differentiated aliens, Federation principles tested against isolation, survival of the ship so far from home in the unknown, etc.  Good contrast with the abundance of food vs. losing 90s% of their food stores in the initial raid. 

Nice score and sound design in this one, as well.

6.

Voyager is fractured into several time periods by an accident, and only Chakotay is able to move between them, in the process meeting old friends and old foes from the previous six seasons

Fun deal. The gel-pack thing is maggufintastic. But who cares.

Icheb and Naomi Wildman are cool. But 17 years... I have questions.

Nice moment between Janeway and Chakotay.

I never liked Seska but kind of nice to see the actress again and the passage of time almost makes me nostalgic to see the Kazon. I'm sorry - sometimes I say things.

One thing, though: how would Chakotay telling Janeway about the epsode's plot be against the Temporal Prime Directive? Obviously these are all alternate timeliness. Not knowledge of the future. Oh yeah: the TPD is nonsense. My fault for asking.

5.

 

The Doctor is forced to help aliens steal Voyager's warp core.

I seem to have lost my notes for this one. I didn't write much, just how this kind of story was getting a little repetitive for The Doctor. But how could they stop? They're always so much fun. Even if I find a lot of it to be better expressed in other Doctor episodes. it's engaging from start to finish.

Nice to see Vorik again. Did it really take me until just now to realize his parents are Jeri Taylor (Voyager co-creator) and Dick Enberg? Sheesh. I probably learned and forgot that 3 or 4 times now, I bet. The perils of covering a series over 2 years.

It's an odd choice for the penultimate episode of the entire series. Personally, I'd have gone with "Author, Author."

4.

The Voyager crew is brainwashed into taking new jobs on an industrialized planet that has a severe labor shortage, leaving only Chakotay, Kim and Neelix (who were on an away mission) and the Doctor (who, in the absence of the crew, has become the Emergency Command Hologram) to save them. Chakotay and Neelix take jobs on the new planet, and try to rescue their amnesiac crewmates – who don't want to leave.

Ambitious. Like "Year of Hell" but much more focused. The alien species set-up is kind of undeveloped, but it's just-developed-enough to get the story across. I like it as a metaphor, which I assume is all it's meant to be, but a metaphor for what, specifically, I don't really know. (Actors and roles? Re-entering the workforce after Trek? A vague sort of swipe at capitalism?) Whatever the case, some fun moments. There always are with brain-wipe plots. Also, plenty of inconsistencies.

 

Perhaps it might've been tied into that management-class-alien-species from the health care episode (coming up next incidentally - spoiler alert!) That'd have been cool. 

3.

  

The Doctor's program is stolen and he is forced to work in an alien hospital, where he skillfully manipulates the system to provide ethical medical care.

Classic Trek with all that entails. I bet there are those who feel the Doctor's actions, here, aren't correct, or that the writers fumble the debate in an alienating way. I don't, but I can sympathize with the proverbial viewer who does. This engages me on a Trek level (alien-hospitals and space kidnapping, etc.), theater-level (good performances from President Logan and all the rest) and a compelling, engaging topic, explored within accessible dramatic limits. And I like what it brings up and how it does so. Really, the people of the future's health care issues are more or less solved. Anything the replicator or transporter can't take care of is fixed up by McCoy's magic spray bottles. I like that the people of Trek are (Tom Paris notwithstanding) consistently appalled when confronted with societal conditions resembling our own.

With one notable exception, of course.

"I miss the Earth so much..."

2.

 

The Doctor writes a holo-novel to be published in the Alpha Quadrant, featuring characters who closely resemble – but do not flatter – the crew.

You'd think there were no more stories to tell about the Doctor's narcissism, but here we are. And despite some of the this-again ness of this, like most of the Doctor episodes, I'm too busy enjoying myself to mind too much. Let's face it: part of the reason Voyager feels after awhile like it's top-heavy towards the Doctor (or Seven of Nine episodes) is because they're the most fun. I like all the cast of the show and all the characters, too, but they had two exceptional performers in Robert Picardo and Jeri Ryan. Not taking anyone from anyone else, of course.

The story might have been developed a bit more or in a different direction, something like "Blood of Chaotica" or "Tinker Tenor". Really it's a very simple structure and comes across almost as fan service in some ways, but like I often say any multiple-seasons show has to give the actors new ways to blow off steam once in awhile.

I put this one under that umbrella.

I forgot about the very ending of this one, with all the mk1 Picardos (referenced in "Life Line").

1.

Voyager encounters a Talaxian settlement leaving Neelix with the difficult decision of whether to leave the crew.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but this is possibly the most heroic of all the send-offs outside Spock's original death in TWOK for any Trek character. It actually made me want to see some kind of movie with Neelix as the main character, which I thought wouldn't just be impossible pre-this-project but evidence of actual insanity if uttered aloud. So kudos to all involved on that. I'm happy to discover I can even change my mind about such a thing in my advanced age.

Is Tuvok's farewell jig completely cheesy? Absolutely it is. Like Ryan Britt once wrote, Trek is usually at its best when it gets up to do the jerky nerd dance at the wedding and everyone groans. Maybe not Roddenberry-era Trek, but the case can be made for the Berman era.

This one isn't the most original perhaps - the world or the dilemma - but the familiar as tweaked / run through some fun Trek tropes. Congratulations, Neelix, you get my vote for most memorable/ favorite of season 7.

~

Join me for one last Delta Quadrant go-round 
next time with Voyager: My Top 20 Episodes.