LizstarTrek - Voyager Season 5 episodes 21-26
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!
**Someone to Watch Over Me ** - VOY 8/10
Seven is collecting research by staring at Torres and Paris. Torres asks her about it, and finds out she’s researching courting behavior. She reads the notes and is like “Why do you know when we’re having ‘intimate relations?’ Seven responds with ‘There is no one on deck seven who does not know when you are having intimate relations’ and almost gets her nose caved in.
Janeway suggests she just try to date instead. It’s maybe the gayest scene in Trek so far.
The Kadi are coming to visit! The Kadi are a species of conservative religious fundamentalists who lead an ascetic lifestyle. Their abbot dropps off one of them, a Kadi named Tomin. They have strict rules about what they can eat and do, but as soon as Tomin is alone he’s like “I’d like to try this spicy dish I heard about in your data files actually”. Yeah that makes sense.
Since the Doctor is Seven’s teacher in how to act like a person, he gives her dating lessons. At first it’s a little too narrow (she knows what sex is, doctor) to way too broad (Here’s a holographic guy, go flirt with him). It’s fun to see good actors try to be bad at things they’re good at. There’s no way Jeri Ryan wasn’t SWIMMING in dudes. Paris watches and comments that she’s a lost cause. Not that she couldn’t GET a date, half the crew apparently wants to jump her, but keeping a date is the hard part. The Doctor gets offended, and so they make a bet. Seven of Nine will show up to Tomin’s function with a date, and it will go WELL. I dunno about you, but I’m as into these stakes as all the ship blowy up ones.
Singing lessons! I dunno how this will get Seven laid, but the Doctor seems real into it. Real, REAL into it. He’s looking at her like… uh oh.
Kim got promoted from Person Seven Works With to friend! He offers her advice for some “candidates” she’s looking for for dating, based on her interests. “I didn’t know you had any interests.” “Neither did I, but apparently they include astronomy, physics, and music.” Funny.
We don’t have get to see Seven with her hair down very often, it’s nice.
She and this dude have a date. It’s a bit awkward, but certainly not TERRIBLE. They have a dance, and they’re both still awkward, but it gets better, until she gets a BIT too into it and tears a one of his ligiments, so he has to go home. Damn girl, how the hell did you pull that off? She laments that dating is a poor form of social interaction, it’s much better when it’s like it is with the doctor! When people just say what they mean. Did you know some people read Seven in an autism kinda way? No way, right? How strange.
Oh hey, remember Tomin? He’s fucking SMASHED on synthehol. Neelix didn’t even know you could DO that. He’s got holographic babes on each arm and is like “I’m thinking of leaving the convent and joining Voyager!!” Ohhh the alternate universe where they just kept picking up stragglers.
At Tomin’s party the next day, with Tomin still smashed beyond belief, Seven goes on a date with the Doctor. She’s doing well, and is almost the life of the party. Aaaand then Paris is like “well congrats doc, you won the wager” and she becomes, quite understandably, offended at the idea that the Doctor was just doing this for her for a bet. Which, yeah, fair.
Tomin is drunk as hell and super horny for Seven. He begs her to assimilate him. Get in line, dog.
The Doctor tries to smooth things over with Seven, and it seems to go alright, but he’s now coming to terms with the fact that he has in fact developed feelings for her. So now HE goes to PARIS for advice. Paris is like “Just tell her how you feel, duh.” “What if she doesn’t feel the same way back?” “Always the risk you gotta take.” So he does. He confesses, and theeen it turns out it was just a holodeck program. Understandable, gotta practice first. And then the real Seven comes in, and tells him that while she appreciates what he’s been doing, they no longer need these social lessons, as there are no potential mates on the ship for her to persue. The Doctor sadly plays Someone to Watch Over Me on piano as the episode ends. Poor Doctor.
Good episode, if a bit sad.
11:59 - VOY 2/10
I mis-saw this picture as Janeway with a rapier and got REALLY excited for a second
Neelix is infodumping about Earth to Janeway. Oh no he’s a Earthaboo. Apparently he’s been studying Earth and its many landmarks. Janeway asks him what he knows about the Millenium Gate (it’s some kind of self sufficient super building), and he lists the specifications of it, but she knows a bit more than that. Her ancestor is the person who built it, a woman named Shannon O’Donnel. And then it suddenly jumps to the past, the far off year of 2000, with Shannon O’Donnel. Wow, it’s a stealth Mrs. Columbo reboot.
She’s driving through Indiana and her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Every store in town is completely closed, except one, a book store run by a Henry Janeway and his son. He’s a curmodgeonly guy, a luddite, who’s making signs to stop The Millenium Gate. He calls it a “glorified shopping mall”, and that its forcing businesses to close. He’s kind of unlikable, I’m not gonna lie. She endears herself to them and and gets hired to help make the fliers and things, because he refuses to use computers. My dude, it’s 2000.
They try and push a romance between Shannon, who’s basically just Janeway but in the year 2000, and this dude who looks like Rick Berman’s self insert, and acts like him too. And then the theme of the episode appears to be how important ancestry and geneology is. The ONLY thing keeping me here is that I like Star Trek period pieces and seeing actors in cool outfits, but even here it’s just… normal-ass clothing.
Anyways turns out Shannon was a NASA engineer who got fired because it’s America and we don’t treat the people who actually do good jobs well. The guy who’s trying to build the Millenium Gate hits her up and offers her a job, if she helps him talk his dad down. Basically, he’s the last hold out, and if he doesn’t sell the shop by midnight, they’ll have to move the Millenium Gate, which is SUPPOSED to help the town a lot. Not that Alex Jones over here cares.
They get into an argument about it, he’s as awful as he has been all episode. She later describes him as “listening to no one but himself” which is pretty accurate. And then we jump back to the future, where we’re talking more about family history and how important it is. But as she examines her history more and more, she starts to realize how malleable history is. Everything is biased by what people want to believe, so she’s digging through everything she can to learn more about Shannon, and she’s starting to realize that the family story of Shannon single handidly building the Millenium Gate and ushering Humanity into the future is pretty incorrect. She was just a consultant.
Shannon leaves the town, and then decides to come back and try one more time to convince him that he’s being a fucking idiot.
Why? WHY were you thinking about him? For the love of fucking GOD what do you see in this man? The fascist Janeway kissed from several episodes ago was more likable than this, because at least he PRETENDED to not be a piece of garbage. This is built on the romance, and the emotion of these two people but I can’t fucking stand him. His whole thing is “THIS IS MY SHOP I OWN AND I REFUSE TO MOVE IT” when they’re willing to help him move it, for free, into this new multiplex. Who the fuck gives a shit dude. This is like the “THIS IS OUR HOME” colonization episodes but way, WAY worse. Anyways he finally gives in at 11:59, and everyone lives happily ever after.
In the future Janeway is still disollutioned with everything, thinking Shannon not all that important in the grand scheme of things. But her crewmates convince her that it’s actually important, so okay, it’s important. There’s some stuff about “it’s not what she actually did, it’s her inspiration that rippled through time to you that’s important”, which I think is okay, that’s fine.
Over all though I really hated this. I didn’t really like any of its themes or think they were good, and then at its crux its a romance love story that is so, so, SO unpleasant. It’s not trash, but prolly my personal least favorite episode of Voyager so far, holy hell.
Relativity - VOY 8.5/10
We get Voyager being built in Utopia Planitia, and Janeway boarding it for the first time. Oh look at this crew, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, I can’t wait for them all to be alive. We see her walking around getting a tour from an admiral, and we see…. why, who’s that?
Seven of Nine is here in the past! She looks SO uncomfortable and unhappy to be here. She’s trying to find a “weapon” of some kind, and keeps calling in about how she has yet to find it, but keeps getting interrupted by y’know, the ship being a ship where people talk and exist on it. She finds the weapon, but can’t teleport it out, because it’s out of flux. Janeway catches wind of something happening in that space so she goes to explore, and whoever Seven is working with teleports her out, at risk of it possibly harming her. And it does, she dies in transport. Janeway also catches some chroniton readings, but that’s it.
The Captain of the Timeship is a man by the name of Braxton. Sound familiar? Maybe they’ll bring it up later. Anyways Braxton orders them to get a new one. We jump back to Voyager. Pretty chill day. Seven has hypochondria. There’s some cases of space sickness. Paris convinces Seven to join them for a ping pong tournament. Things get worse, as they find out it’s being caused by temporal distortions. They’re causing sickness, food spoilage, overall confusion as people call for help 7 minutes earlier than they need it. Oh also it’s starting to demolecularize the hull, that sounds bad. As the time cops show up, she catches wind of those same readings again. Janeway calls for an abandon ship, but it’s too late, as the ship explodes, just as Seven is teleported to the future.
Braxton explains that someone at some point put a weapon on Voyager, and they need Seven to find it because she can actually determine temporal distortions with her ocular implants. Braxton also tells her to be careful of Janeway. She’s a loose cannon and cannot be trusted. She left him STRANDED in the past once, after he asked for her help! Yes, do you remember that? Braxton is, in fact, the guy who was FUCKING GOD AWFUL at time travel. He was the dude who almost killed Voyager for no reason, and then got stranded in the past, and became a hobo rambling about being from the future. The absolute fucking worst. His CO talks about how much he trusts his captain, but I have no fucking idea why.
They think the weapon might be planted during a battle with the Kazon, and they beam her in. Of course when Janeway senses the readings, she IMMEDIATELY goes hellbent on finding out what the fuck it is. They capture Seven, and Braxton in the future is like “GOD do not tell her anything” and of course Seven spills EVERYTHING.
They have a heart to heart. It’s Gay. They hunt down the ACTUAL sabateur and find out… it’s Braxton!! He’s suffering from temporal psychosis. He’s here to blow up Voyager because it destroyed his life. So, Temporal Psychosis is a thing that happens if they teleport you through time too much, you start to go a bit loony. Future Braxton is arrested for crimes he will commit, as futurer Braxton teleports away to another time, and Seven chases. She’s suffering from psychosis too, and after yet ANOTHER jump, she manages to destroy Braxton’s teleporter, before collapsing and asking Seven to help her.
They eventually get him, but need someone to fix the timeline after its been contaminated so heavily. So they snatch Janeway and send her back to get Braxton at the start before this all even happened. Braxton’s CO explains after its all done that he’ll be reintigrated in tiem for the court date, as will they. There will only be one Seven running around. Aww, I was hoping there’s be a Future Seven for the fans and books to geek about. He also begs them to stop time traveling so much.
This was a really fun episode. I love goofy time travel.
Warhead - VOY 8/10
Harry Kim is on night duty, and is sitting in the captain’s chair. He gets to be in the CAPTAINS CHAIR but he won’t be promoted past Ensign? Poor Kim. They get a distress call, and Kim orders they head towards it. He wakes Chakotay up, who puts him on away mission duty to find the distress call. He goes down with a no name and the Doctor, and they find a weird metal tube who speaks in what Neli says is an old TOS robot speech. Only the Doctor can communicate with it, though it seems to be able to understand English. It asks why it can’t feel its arms and legs, and begs for help. It apparently does not realize it’s an AI.
This is an ensign on the bridge who we see a bit but doesn’t seem to be a major plot point. She’s very cute, I wonder if she’s single. ALSO, Chokie has barely been in any of these episodes. He shows up, people bounce jokes off him, and he stands there and looks pretty. Good use of your Chakotay.
They beam the thing back onto Voyager to find out what it is, and cause the Doctor wants to help it. He becomes very attached to this thing. He explains to it that it’s an AI, and tries to befriend it. They then discover what it is. A nuclear bomb, basically. A smart bomb. They need to get rid of it before it blows up. The Doctor begs them to just operate on it, put it in the holo emitters instead, and deactivate the bomb. They do, but then everything goes to shit. It gets angry at what they’re doing, and takes over the Doctor, angry that they were trying to dismantle it. It remembers who it is now, and its mission. Its mission is to fucking kill people, and it demands Voyager ferry it to its target so it can blow it up.
We get Evil Doctor. Remember Evil Bashir from season 1 DS9? This is so much better. He’s willing to blow up if they stop him, and demands they help him. Kim and Torres are held hostage. Kim TRIES to talk it down, appeal to its better nature, but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s angry like, all the time.
A merchant they’ve worked with shows up, and offers to help. He’s like a smarmy used car salesman. Apparently the bomb was made by the Druoda, and he could sell it for a pretty penny. They’re uncomfortable with the ethics of it though and ask him to leave. His ship opens fire, but then the bomb sends an antimatter wave through the teleporter stream, a thing it can do I guess, and blows it the fuck up.
Meanwhile, other warheads lock onto Voyager and beam through space towards it. That’s prolly not good.
The bomb asks them to help it find out why its memory was jumbled, and they find evidence that the war is actually over, and HAS been for three years, and the bomb was recalled. It’s Very, VERY unhappy about this, because it’s so hellbent on doing what it was made to do, which is blow up these people. It refuses to learn any more about this.
An attempt to stop him fails, just as more bombs show up, willing to tow him to his destination. But they manage to convince him to put his memory back in, aaaand yes, the war IS over. When he tries to convince the other bombs to stop, they’re like “lol no”. There’s some really good flexing with Kim and the Doctor here. I also like the parallels, with Kim like “you’re just regurgitating what you were told to think!” while earlier on, and for a lot of his character, he’s been regurgitating what he was told to think by higher ups and been afraid to think for himself.
The bomb sacrifices itself to blow up the other bombs. Superman. Neli called that this would be an Iron Giant situation, and it sure is. Before the bomb goes, it tries to tell them not to mourn it. Its still saving lives by being a weapon. It’s just that its target changed. Kim thanks for the Doctor for teaching him that AI can become more than its programming, and we see the cute ensign one more time, and then it ends. Good episode, very Trek.
Equinox - VOY 9.5/10
We start by seeing a Starfleet vessel being attacked by Slimers. It’s brutal. They send out an SOS, whiiiich Voyager picks up! They chase after it and go to help. They get there, and the Equinox begs them to extend shields. They do, saving the ship, but no one responds to hails any longer, so they beam over to try and find survivors.
I’m a little surprised they’re so willing to jump into this ship considering I think things have pretended to be Starfleet out here… twice? For a trick? But I mean, any chance of finding others like they. And they do. There are life signs on board. They find a terrified ensign who’s like “But we’re the only Humans in the Delta Quadrant?” They find another who is kind of… numb to everything, and trapped under debris. He claims to have been there for two days. They find a third one who freaks out and thinks he’s under attack so they knock him out and beam him over. And finally, they find the captain on the Bridge. He says he was brought here the Caretaker. Well, turns out they weren’t the only ones then, huh.
They welcome them all on Voyager, and try to help fix up the ship, while also figuring out what’s up with these aliens that are trying to kill them, some dimensional travelers. Half of the crew is suffering from PTSD. That girl they found refuses to go in elevators cause there’s nowhere to run in there, so she travels through jefferies tubes.
Their CO, Maxwell, makes some suggestions on how to capture the dimensional aliens. Build a net. They built a thing that brought them into our reality for several minutes. Oh my fucking god what the hell did you do to these aliens???
It’s pretty clear how this is going to go. Captain Ransom and his CO Max are whispering about not letting these bright eyed and bushy tailed lucky fuckers know what happened. Ransom and Janeway butt heads a bit, not sure who has authority, and Janeway explains that based on protocol, it’s her. But Ransom is like “Hmmmm, do those protocols even matter here in the Delta Quadrant?” Uh, yes, dude. Yes they do. Anyways there’s basically four Equinox members we need to care about. Ransom, his CO Max, the claustrophobic ensign, and the chill engineer Seven saved.
The Equinox crew plans to steal something from Voyager and return to Equinox, because they’re “going home”. Okay y’all. Meanwhile, Janeway assumes the worst. She’s sensing the Sus energy wafting off all of them, and determines that they intentionally made their science facility impossible to enter with radiation. So they just send the Doctor in instead.
The Doctor finds some alien corpses. They’re turning the aliens into fuel. It was pretty clear what was going on, but damn, dog. That’s dark. Janeway confronts them, and we learn that in Equinox’s darkest day, they were saved by some aliens who blessed their travel by invoking spirits. These spirits were some nucleogenic lifeforms. They tried to study them, killed one by accident, and then realized what they could do. Janeway is diiisguuuusted, and relieves him of duty, and confines them all to quarters. They DO get the claustrophobic ensign to help them, cause she genuinely regrets ever having done any of this. But she just couldn’t ignore a command from her captain!
The Doctor activates the other EMH. Unfortunately, they deleted his ethical subroutines, so he takes out the Doctor. That’s not good. He infiltrates Voyager and goes to rescue Ransom. OH and the Clasutrophobic ensign is still working with them. Captains orders :).
They manage to get away, with Seven still on board, as the aliens attack. One charges at Janeway….
TO BE CONTINUED. Of course. You better watch out, Ransom. You stole Seven. Janeway hunted down the fucking BORG QUEEN for her, you ain’t shit.
This was very, very interesting, and I liked it a lot. I love the concept. I once was gonna do a Star Trek tabletop thing and suggested making a ship and thrusting them into what Voyager went through and seeing how they’d handle it. This is that. It’s nice to see as a mirror, and what could happen. But also what could happen if the people were weaker, weren’t giving it their all. Ransom kept talking about how Voyager was soft, how they didn’t go through what he did. Dog, it wasn’t called The Year Of Pretty Alright. And you follow that up by talking about how after a shitty time you met some friendly aliens who gave you food? Dude.
He’s awful, but refuses to accept it. He’s not even “what Janeway could be if she gave up her morals”, because she wouldn’t. She would never stoop to that level, because she’s who she is. He’s who he is. And he was not built for this, at all.
It’s also really fun to look into cause like, so, a lot of people hate Janeway and are like “WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THIS AND THIS AND THIS TO GET BACK FASTER, JUST GIVE UP YOUR MORALS, YOU’RE IN THE DELTA QUADRANT NOW, WHO CARES”. Did they watch this episode? Are there “Captain Ransom Did Nothing Wrong” apologists out there? Can I hate them, because I already do.