LizstarTrek - Voyager Season 7 episodes 1 - 5
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!
Unimatrix Zero Part 2 - VOY 7.5/10
We return to find out heroes Borgified. But it’s okay, they’re still themselves! Mostly. Torres has a broken voice box, and Tuvok is slowly starting to hear voices. They’re trying to sneak a virus in, but things aren’t going immediately as planned, but at least they’re unknown for now. It’s interesting that the person most at risk of losing themselves is TUVOK of all of them.
Also it’s kinda nuts that Voyager just has anti-assimilation medicine, will this EVER come back cause that’s super useful
Meanwhile, Seven goes back into Unimatrix Zero and tries to help out from inside. We’ve basically got a three-part war here, as Voyager is also chasing the borg cube. There’s also some stuff inside, Chokie is acting captain, Paris is acting first officer, and Paris is unhappy they’re several hours too late and wants to pull them out, their lives aren’t worth the risk. They’re KINDA doing a Riker in Best of Both Worlds thing with Chokie here, but uh, the difference is Riker is likable.
The Borg Queen is still a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain and I do not like her. She IS attacked by a Borg who’s disconnected himself from the hivemind somehow, though sadly it fails.
She also looks like she’s on the verge of crying at all times for some reason.
Tuvok betrays them, and Janeway is taken before the Queen. The Queen realizes some are being released due to the virus, and blows up entire cubes and spheres in front of her because ONE person there is free.
She eventually enters Unimatrix Zero herself, at Janeway’s suggestion. Janeway thinks she’s afraid to go in cause she’ll realize how good being an individual is, but that’s weird cause she’s THE ONLY ACTUAL INDIVIDUAL THERE. Anyways she goes in with a more diplomatic approach and tries to befriend children. “Oh it’s lovely in the collective, you’ll love it”. And that’s why you’re forcing people into it, yeah. And why all of the deaths that you’re doing are Janeway’s fault, of course. She suggests Janeway compromise.
Unfortunately this seems to work on Janeway? She sends a message to Voyager and is like “Demand their surrender. Unimatrix Zero can no longer exist. I won’t be responsible for more deaths.” Chakotay somehow sees this as a coded message. I don’t see it but I guess I’m not the most shipped person with Janeway, ALTHOUGH I SHOULD BE sob sob
Yeah so they shut down Unimatrix Zero so that they can’t find them there anymore, and they’ll be seperated and safe. Janeway flatly goes “I don’t compromise with Borg”, which is pretty badass, and some newly released Borg show up to help Voyager save their away team.
Seven goes into the collapsing Unimatrix Zero and has an undying declaration of love with this guy. It’s been my least favorite part of these episodes other than the Borg Queen shit. But my favorite thing is that, canonically, they do NOT find each other, and Seven falls in love with women instead. Hell yeah.
And then it ends, alls well that ends well, maybe this will effect the Borg in a good way. Maybe not. Who can say?
Imperfection - VOY 8.5/10
We get rid of the Borg Kids in the cold open. All of them but Icheb, who I’m sure will have a nice long life with us. Seven and Icheb are genuinely sad to see them go, but happy they’ll live lives with their people, and together. Icheb is also looking to apply for Starfleet, which is cool. Again, I’m sure that’ll go well for him.
Seven is having some problems, unfortunately. She’s hiding things from the Doctor, and her alcove is refusing to let her regenerate, saying her parts are not working. She goes to the mess hall and passes out, having a weird attack. Her skin begins to rip apart and its very unpleasant to watch.
Her cortical implant is exploding, and needs to be replaced, it can’t be fixed. So they need to go get a new one from a Borg debris field. Seven is also being a grumpy pissy puss about this. I mean, it’s a common response with serious illness, as the doctor says, but I dunno. Janeway is going herself, to try and save Seven, because uh, they are very good friends, yes. She’s taking the Flyer… Wait, the Flyer??? It blew the fuck up last season, and they bring attention to it too. I guess it got better in the Sickbay between episodes.
They go to a broken up Borg Sphere, and surgically remove a node from a dead drone, but are attacked by some scavengers. They get out pretty easily, with no problems. We then get a surgery scene with Seven dying, buuuut it’s just a simulation. Clearly the node won’t work. Seven does not take this news well, understandably.
She breaks out of Sick Bay, and where does she go? Back to work. Work is what makes her feel better. She literally says “What I want is to be useful”. And Torres, who has ALWAYS been grumpy and shitty to Seven (Seven doesn’t make it easy), is the one to stand up for her and stick with her. I actually like that a lot.
Icheb refuses to give up on Seven, and offers his own node. The Doctor refuses, that’s suicide, but Icheb has done a LOT of research on this. He thinks he can survive cause he’s younger and not as connected to his cortical node. Seven, of course, doesn’t give a shit. ANY chance Icheb won’t survive is enough for her to say no.
Icheb turns off his node in defiance. Holy shit. It shows that it can, actually, work, and there’s a very emotional scene with him BEGGING Seven to open up and rely on others for once, so they can help her, like she’s helped everyone else.
It works out well, there’s some more emotional scenes. I like this episode, it was a good powerful one.
Drive - VOY 7/10
This was apparently supposed to be the next episode after Unimatrix Zero Part 2, but for some reason they aired the previous episode before this. Oh well.
While running some tests on the new Delta Flyer, Tom and Harry run into an open world side mission with an alien ship coming up and challenging them to a race through an asteroid field. Something something Kessel Run. I like the idea of this being a racing episode, because we’ve never HAD anything like that with Star Trek.
They beat her, and get invited to join a big race, the Antarian Trans-Stellar Rally, which they offer to join. Janeway is down, and is ready to win. And now it’s time for a ROMANTIC COMEDY, because the race was scheduled on the same fucking day Torres and Paris were planned to have their first date in a long time.
Actually, Torres is SURPRISINGLY chill about it. For now. It’s hinted she won’t be eventually. That eventually comes VERY soon. She’s not like, angry. She just decides they don’t belong together because he’s always too busy and they’re not right for each other. Silly me, hoping they’d be adults about something.
The straights are writing relationships again. I just wanted my damn racing episode.
Voyager becomes the host of the race, because of neutrality being needed cause some of the racing participants hate each other. Fair ‘nough.
Belanna decides to stop being a doofus and support Paris. Not just support, but SUPPORT. She takes Kims’ place as his co-pilot, which is cute.
What results is a fun little race, but also with some big political maneuverings. There’s some attacks and sabatoge that ends up knocking out one of the co-pilots, the co-pilot of the girl who started all this. Kim teams up with her to make things fair. Paris and Torres are rocky in how they’re handling this co-pilot thing. She’s trying. Paris isn’t.
Everyone on Voyager is REAL into this race, keeping a close eye on it.
Turns out the girl Kim is crushing on and working with in this race is a terrorist who wants to blow things up to destroy peace. Wow what a fucker. He figure sit out cause Kim is actually quite smart, and holds her at gunpoint, figuring out through easy deduction that she rigged a bomb to the Delta Flyer. He sends a message to the Delta Flyer just as they’re talking out their feelings. There’s a race going on here, y’all.
Harry sends them a message using morse code, and they need to eject the core. They have 30 seconds to warp core breach, and htey need to get away from everyone to contain the blast. While the explosion is counting down, Paris asks her to marry him. “YOU’RE ASKING THIS NOW?!”
They survive the explosion, and obviously don’t win the race.
Kinky.
They get saved, and we get a cute ending with them flying off in the delta flyer with JUST MARRIED written on it and shit tied to the back. Adorable.
This one was alright.
Repression - VOY 4/10
Are you ready for a MAQUIS EPISODE?! Yes, the Maquis may be all fucking dead and long gone, but not ENOUGH. We get some Bajoran nonsense from this guy, and then we see he’s talking about Chokie’s ship which is… CALLED THE FUCKING VAL JEAN. ARE YOU MOTHER FUCKERING KIDDING ME???
If you all don’t remember Eddington and his WEIRD god damn exception with Les Mis, it’s a HUGE meme in my friend group, and this DROVE US NUTS.
Meanwhile, in a date at the holodeck, Tom and Torres find a Maquis member who’s in a coma. Apparently attacked in some way. Tuvok is put on the case. His first and only suspect is Tabor, the injured crewmember’s, best friend. Chokie is like “That’s ridiculous, I’ve known her for years!” Dude. You are, in fact, the WORST at spies and judging people, it is WELL documented.
More Maquis are knocked out in this way, and now the Maquis are getting jumpy. They also don’t trust Tuvok about this, because he’s betrayed them too. A Bolian is like “Could be Janeway. Could be Seven. Could be-“
Tuvok is getting VERY antsy about this. He has “a hunch” and feels this all is extremely unlogical. He even starts suggesting HARRY is a suspect, cause he had a friend who was killed by the Maquis once. Harry is like “Dude are you for fucking REAL?” I like burned out Kim.
Also the injured are starting to wake up. They’re fine.
Wow no way, it’s TUVOK? Yeah obviously. He’s forcing people into mind melds. “It’s a holy time”, he says before attacking Torres and Chakotay. He’s clearly not fully in charge of his mind. He actually ends up realizing it and IMMEDIATELY turns himself in. He’s seeing a Bajoran be command him to kill and hurt.
We then get what is the FIRST time Tim Russ has been allowed to really super act in a while. He’s getting EMOTIONAL over this. He’s lashing out. They find out there was an awakening word in a letter to Tuvok recently, hacked by this guy, Teero. Chakotay, waking up, recognizes him. He was kicked out of the Maquis for being an extremist.
DUDE. YOU ALL BOMBED CIVILIANS. YOU WERE ALL EXTREMISTS.
Tuvok sends out a message to Chakotay and awakens all the sleeper agents now. They then fully take over the ship. I’m not super engaged in this, because I’ve NEVER liked Maquis stuff, I find it so fucking stupid. And also I find Janeway is being SO dumb here, she just does not understand wtf is happening here until Chakotay points a gun at her. “What is going on here?” GIRL. YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON BY NOW, DO YOU HAVE ANY AMOUNT OF AWARENESS
Also after taking over and putting on Maquis clothing they’re sTILL wearing the insignia.
Tuvok convinces them he’s on their side by almost killing the captain. I don’t really get the scene. Chakotay tests his mettle by giving him a defective phaser, telling him its set to kill, and telling him to kill Janeway. He tried to, and then IMMEDIATELY mind melds with Chakotay after. I don’t get it. Okay, we explain it later. Tuvok had been in his senses, and knew that it wasn’t charged because he wouldn’t give someone he doesn’t trust a loaded weapon. Fair.
Anyways they fix things VERY easily, turning everyone back to normal, and nothing happens ever again? This was meh.
At least we get this fantastic image.
Critical Care - VOY 6.5/10
We get a scene of a really awful hospital situation. Some smarmy con artist schmoozes his way through and offers a head doctor something he found. The Doctor, in his holoemitter. Uh oh. He’s VERY unhappy about this but immediately starts treating people. The ship here is VERY low tech and he doesn’t have all the ammenities he wants, but he dives in anyway, while complaining, mind
This shit is just the American healthcare system.
Meanwhile on Voyager they find out they got a fake, IMMEDIATELY realize who did it, and go hunting after him.
They take the Doctor from the horrible triage conditions to “Level Blue”, which has rich patients with boo-boos. His absolutely priority. It really, REALLY is just the American Healthcare system. Apparently their computer, the Allocator, assigns who gets the care around here. And for SOME reason its assigning it to the rich and powerful. Gee. The Doctor IMMEDIATELY tries to sneak helping other people. The computer won’t let him. So he begins stealing medicine for them instead.
Meanwhile Voyager is on a wild goose chase to find this thief. It’s just a Stembolts plot again.
The Doctor is eventually caught. The kid he was treating is basically killed by restricting him medicine. But he tries sneaking around AGAIN. When his boss finds him, AGAIN…. he fucking INFECTS HIM WITH A VIRUS.
HOLY SHIT.
Note that the Doctor has ethical subroutines. He’s not allowed to do unethical things. So this is the most ethical solution he could find. Intentional poisining people. And the administrator isn’t getting ANY help for his disease from any of the other doctors there cause they’re ALL unhappy with how shitty the system is.
After the Doctor fixes this garbage, Voyager shows up and saves him, and he IMMEDIATELY goes to Seven and is like “My ethical subroutines are broken, please fix them”. Hah, they call it out. But yeah, they’re working fine. He did the right thing, which is almost more fucked up.