LizstarTrek - Voyager Season 5 episodes 6-10

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

Timeless - VOY 8/10

We start with a pan on an icey world, which considering the quality of the video, makes it look like a 70s nature documentary. Two figures beam in, and announce “WE’RE HERE” as it zooms out to show Voyager under the ice. Very, very good setup.

They beam inside Voyager, and take off their masks to show that they’re Kim and Chakotay. They wander through the ship, trying to find things, as they walk past the long frozen corpses of Voyager’s crew. They find Seven’s corpse, teleport her to their ship, and activate the EMH, who’s like “What the FUCK is going on”, much like us. Chakotay says it clearly, without explaining anything, so it’ll be a good spot to go to break: “We’re here to change history”.

We get a flashback. They built a slipstream engine, and it LOOKS good. Everyone is celebrating, excited for the trip tomorrow. The engine’s designer, Paris, is the only one not celebrating. He’s running tests and diagnostics and finds a small slip up, which means they’ll PROBABLY all die. That’s bad. Harry though, uses his ingenuity to plan a way to fix it. He will use the delta flyer and basically tow Voyager to Earth. Now we know why Harry is alive. Chakotay goes with him. Now we know why CHAKOTAY is alive. Kim is VERY pushy that he can do this, he wants to get the fuck home.

Back in the future, 15 years in fact, they finish explaining it to the Doctor. And they’re here to use magic tech shit to send a temporal message back into the past. Future Harry is jaded as fuck, and looks great. He’s got a VERY small amount of gray in his hair, and his hair is in a new hair style. It helps make him seem like he’s much older. Meanwhile, Chakotay just put flour in his hair, and he doesn’t seem older, because he can’t act. Meanwhile they have a woman with them, Tess, who’s Chakotay’s girlfriend, who’s here to help them out.

They’re EXTREMELY wanted for stealing everything, and Federation ships are after them. So they’ve got very little time to break the Temporal Prime Directive. Tess and Chakotay have a moment in Voyager, while Kim work with the Doctor. Kim is jaded as fuuuuuck. He tells about how he got home, got honors and medals, and how he spent the entire time wishing he was dead in this ice rather than them. MASSIVE survivor’s guilt.

They get contacted by the ship here to take them home. Hey, look who it is! Geordi is an apologetic attacker here. He admits that if he was in their shoes, he’d probably be doing what they’re doing, but he has to protect his crew and the timestream, so he will stop them. They push their ship to stay away from Geordi, which ends in it starting to warp core breach, and Geordi’s like “Let me teleport you over, please”. Oh, Geordi.

Kim sends a message back to Voyager with corrected telemetry, basically the correct message he was SUPPOSED to send. It doesn’t work. They’re still there. Kim freaks the FUCK out. He failed then, and he failed now. The Doctor basically slaps him to his senses, and he sends a message INSTEAD with incorrect telemetry that’ll drop them out of the slipstream immediately. He sends them JUST as they blow the fuck up.

It works, they’re all thrown out of the slipstream, nice and safe. Our episode ends with Kim watching a message from himself from the future.

This was a good episode. I was expecting more temporal angst about doing a thing they consider bad, but no. THey were pretty clear this was the correct thing for them.

Infinite Regress - VOY 6/10

We get a weird cold open where Seven of Nine stalks around and hunts some meat, while in the mirror we see a Klingon devouring the meat. Is this an episode where Seven is possessed by Klingon Ghosts??

In the bridge meeting, Neelix laments that their late night bandit was back at it once again. Time to make locks. Locks, on a Starfleet vessel, my gosh.

Hey, Naomi is back! She’s following Seven around, observing her, because she wants to be perfect too, like her. Basically the writers saw that one scene with Naomi being scared of Seven, and thought it was a great idea to give them a continuous relationship thing. They were right. Anyways she suddenly SHIFTS, and is all happy and sweet and it’s extremely awkward to watch Seven SMILE. We see more people in mirrors and reflections, it’s VERY good.

She becomes a Klingon again, claims she’s Son of K’Vok, and tries to mate with Torres. It doesn’t go well. She knocks out a guard, and then becomes a scared little girl calling for help, because someone got hurt. Then she becomes a Vulcan ambassador, and then the Klingon again, before Tuvok knocks her out.

The Doctor basically diagnoses her with Borg Multiple Personality Disorder, as she’s displaying the memory engrams of people who she assimilated. They think the reason for it is a borg beacon from some debris near them, go they go and investigate.

Neli mentioned that this episode reminds her a lot of Masks, a late TNG episode with Data displaying multiple personalities. That episode was a chance to let Brent Spiner flex as an actor. This episode is doing the same exact thing. And it’s the exact same, an episode with a LOT of actor flexing.

One thing I like about this is Torres. Season 1 Torres, after being scratched by a Seven trying to fuck her? Would have been pissy about it for hours. This Torres? When Seven explains that the Klingon will not be with them, due to the dampener they have that’s supressing the personalities, Torres is like “Oh, so this isn’t our second date?” SHE JOKES ABOUT IT.

They find out what the issue is. There was a recently assimilated group of people with a disease that spread through the link. Her neural pattern is not surviving this well, the Doctor almost loses her. And as one of the recently assimilated peoples arrives to explain it was a manufactured disease to try and hurt the Borg, they find there’s no treatment to the disease. But MAYBE Tuvok can mind meld to fix it, cause Vulcan mind meld magic.

Tuvok mind melds into a nightmare. There’s children screaming, very unpleasant, the effect is ugly and nauseating, meanwhile it keeps jumping back to Voyager where people are going “oh god shit’s fucked” as the alien of the week is attacking them to get the disease spreading thingy back, isntead of just waiting ten fucking minutes for them to be done with it. Anyways, I can’t even tell if the mind meld helped, it was just him getting thrown around for 3 minutes until they turned the fucking thing off, beamed it into space, and the episode ends.

All the acting from Seven was good. Everything else was meh.

Nothing Human - VOY 3/10

We start with the Doctor basically doing a Vacation Slides scene, and the quipping from everyone is SHOCKINGLY good. And then the fucking wave from Star Trek Generations comes and rocks the ship.

Afterwards, everyone is fine, but they get some kind of distress call that’s all screeching and alien sounding. I wonder how many aliens sound like that before the translator gets to them. They go to the call’s source, beam the nonhuman thing to sick bay, and then it jumps on Torres and the actress has to pretend that this fucking Zerg Body Pillow is attacking her, it is VERY funny.

They need an expert on exobiology. The best one they can get from the holodeck is a Crell Moset, a Cardassian. He’s a VERY friendly guy, super pleasant and social. I can’t WAIT for this to become horrifying! All of the people on the ship are a little uncomfy. A lot of them ARE still Maquis, and they’re racist. Crell Moset gives a few signs into his nature. He laments that the Cardassians were ever on Bajor. He likes using scalpels, as it gives him more insight into the body of who he’s working on, more than laser cutters. He’s willing to kill this alien, which SEEMS to be sapient, if it means saving Torres.

The hologram destabalizes slightly, so they enlist the help of an Engineer. He’s a Bajoran Maquis member and ohhh we know where THIS is going, huh.

Anyways the REAL Moset did war crimes. Because of this, Torres refuses to let the hologram work on her, and half of the crew is angry about it. This Bajoran is going to resign his commission because of this. Y’all. It’s a hologram. And the personality engrams they made for this hologram are based on the known data on him that the Federation has, which does not include war crimes. Just make him look like a friendly Bolian, who GIVES a shit.

The Doctor holds the idiot ball, upset that people are trying to slander this guy cause of racism, though yes, he did war crimes. For the record though, Belanna IS racist. She directly admits, “guilty as charged when it comes to Cardassians, as far as I believe, they’re all scum”. And for some reason the hologram is like “YES I AM EVIL. WHO CARES, I’M HELPING SAVE PEOPLE.” so for some reason, yes, he has his “real personality”.

This is the dumbest shit in a while. There are a MILLION solutions to this problem. Here’s another one. Just use another fucking hologram. He can’t be the ONLY xenobiologist you have on file???? CHOOSE ANY OTHER ONE, WHO CARES.

Another alien ship shows up, and Frank Welker goes fucking ham. He’s the voice actor for the alien creatures, and he’s so squeely and awful that Janeway is like “can we turn that down, please”. They save Belanna’s life using Moset’s research, and the life of the alien, beam it to its friends, who leave happily, and then Janeway tells Torres to shut up about being angry they used his research on her. The Doctor then decides to delete Moset, deciding that he cannot in good conscience use research gained through suffering. The end.

I did not like this episode very much. They already did this episode better, without any of the easily fixed plot nonsense, with that episode with the doctor who saved Neelix’s life, after having killed most of his people in a nuclear blast. Anyways, meh.

Thirty Days - VOY 7.5/10

We start with Paris getting demoted. Seems they’re FINALLY done with his bullshit. Though again, he’s been way better lately. He’s demoted to Ensign. Damn, Paris got demoted before Kim got promoted, guess I lost the office poll. Janeway sentences him to 30 days in solitary confinement. Jesus, solitary confinement in the 25th century? What the hell did he even do. He defiantly walks his way down to the brig and goes in.

While in there, he decides to write a letter to his dad. “Hey dad. You’ll never guess where I ended up!” yeah he probably can, Harry, this is not the first time. Anyways it’s just a framing device… for how it all went down.

Voyager finds an ocean world. Not a world with an ocean in it, a planet made ENTIRELY of water, no land at all, being held by a containment field. Voyager is attacked by the people from the surface, but a quick explanation shows there’s no hostilities. The aliens there, the Moneans, offer to let Voyager scan their ocean, in exchange for them trying to help. The ocean is disappearing, and no one knows why. Paris IMMEDIATELY jumps at the opportunity. He LOVES the ocean, always has as a kid, and it fills him with a sense of wonder.

As they explore below the surface, Voyager does its OWN scans and determines that the ocean will be gone within 5 years, so whatever they need to do they should do it fast. Down below, Paris and crew find the core, which is weakening. Why? Well, it turns out the ocean is getting denser, and it’s crushing the core, so its using more power to protect itself rather than keep up the containment field. But WHY is the ocean getting denser?

It’s pollution, basically. Industry and stuff is causing problems and it’s going to destroy the planet, the ocean, and the entire civilization if they don’t stop. Paris tries to convince them to, but “that would be giving up our ways of life! Never!” Ah. It’s one of THESE episodes. I think we’ll see how Paris got arrested soon. Paris yells at the consul about it, and Janeway snaps at him about it. She agrees with him, but they have the prime directive to worry about.

Tom makes a decision. If they can shut down the refineries, while they work on fixing them they can ALSO fix the pollution. Anything to save the ocean. So it’s time Tom becomes a fucking ecoterrorist. Yes. Now, I want to make it very, very clear. I am EXTREMELY pro-enviromentalism, and I have eco-terrorist sympathies, I will not lie. So I’m with Paris here. The episode wants you to be, mind you. The people he’s up against are stuffy beaurocrats who don’t want to lose profits. Who fucking cares?

Tom’s missile is intercepted in time before it blows up the refinery, and Tom is captured. Janeway admires his principles, and understands why he did what he did, but this IS a ship and they need people to follow orders. So he’s demoted, and given 30 days of solitary confinement. Though, of note, throughout the episode we saw that Janeway let multiple people visit him.

This letter he’s writing is to show that yes, he went to jail. But this time, he did it for a good cause, and something he believed in. I liked this episode.

Counterpoint - VOY 2/10

Voyager is being boarded by a Devore inspection team. Apparently this is routine. They beam on board, and one beams directly into Janeway’s office, takes command of the ship, and tells her to come to her office and “make herself at home”.

If this shit was any more Nazi coded it would be an Enigma Machine. He plays some classical music over the intercom while his people go around inspecting the ship. He’s the overly friendly nazi type, offering her coffee as his people walk around and are dickheads, breaking shit on purpose as the Doctor is like “Please, thats fragile-“

The lead nazi is like “You need friends here. I can be that friend~” while still being a y’know, nazi. They do not find what they’re looking for and leave, though. What they’re looking for is telepaths. Luckily for them, the two Vulcans on board died a while ago in an accident, so they have no telepaths at all

No obviously that’s not true. They’re just holding them in the teleporter buffer. And not JUST the Vulcans; other refugees too! Yes. This is an episode about hiding the jews from the nazis. Just, fucking straight up. It’s not hiding it. Their plan is to send the refugees through a wormhole that’ll take them out of this space.

The inspector, Kashyk, shows up again, alone, and explains that actually, fascism is bad. And all that shit he JUST told her 8 minutes ago about how telepaths cannot be trusted? He doesn’t believe it anymore. He wants to help the refugees, which he knows they’re harboring, and warns them that they’re about to go into a trap, which they find out is true. No one trusts him, understandably. But there are plenty of sympathizers in his people, so the refugees are like “He could absolutely be telling the truth”. But you never know.

Janeway straight up tells him she does not trust him, but he’ll be kept on the ship, cause they can’t just give him up if he’s asking for asylum. But he’s under CONSTANT surveillance, and they don’t trust him. He understands. Anyways from that point on he’s in all major meetings, on the bridge as they’re doing stuff, and giving advice. Why is he here? Why is she letting him do this?? They have a cute scene together that’s clearly romantic. Please do not do this.

For some reason, now everyone trusts him. I have no idea why. There was no real thing where he risked his life to save anyone, or anything. He DOES declare that he’s going to sacrifice himself to save them, though. He’ll take his ship and go back to the Devore, taking command of their inspection team, and in the confusion, letting Voyager pass. Okay, it has to be a trick, right? Like, they tearfully let him go, he kisses Janeway before leaving, but they have to be setting a trap. And yes, Janeway’s expression as he leaves makes that clear.

Anyways another inspection happens, and this fucker is back in his post as the head inspector, doing his shtick he did the first time around. Yep, he betrayed them! What a fucking surprise! But whoops, Janeway tricked him and never ACTUALLY trusted him! He decides to let them go so that this isn’t on his permanent record, and because some of those feelings were real! She’s sad he did this, but it is what it is.

Wow! This episode kinda blew! So, if this episode was JUST Janeway Bugs Bunnying a nazi, I would have liked it. That would have been good. But no, the intention, and how you’re supposed to read it, is that she DID develop feelings for him, and was genuinely hoping he’d go with them. The design concept for this was “it’s been a while since Janeway had a romance partner!” YEAH, BUT WHY THIS ONE?!

God almighty, it’s such an absolute BLUNDER of a concept that was actually quite good! Janeway bugs bunny’s some nazis. That’s good, let’s run with it. NO. DO NOT HAVE HER FALL IN LOVE WITH CHRISTOPHER WALTZ’S CHARACTER FROM INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! It was also OBVIOUS what was happening from the very start. As soon as that guy showed up and said “I am requesting asylum”, I knew beat for beat how the entire rest of the episode was going to go, and it did not surprise me, in any way.