LizstarTrek - Voyager Season 7 episodes 11 - 14
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!
Shattered - VOY 8/10
Everything is nice and happy until it’s not. Suddenly some spacetime temporal distortion rips nto the ship, causing the warpcore to lose containment and hitting Chakotay with something that makes him Old. Chakoldtay.
The Doctor fixes him, while being a grumpy little mother fucker. He’s angry cause everyone ignores him and leaves him in sickbay all day. He also has no idea what a mobile emitter is. Oh no.
Chokey goes to the Bridge and finds that it’s in the past, before they even went to the Delta Quadrant. He then goes to Engineering and finds Seska. He manages to escape back to the Doctor and gets a Serum Against Time Shenanigans, which seems very VERY good to have handy.
He gets Past Janeway inoculated, and teaches her about the future. She’s skeptical. I like this as a concept btw. Neli calls it a “glorified clipshow” but I really like temporal jumping around and seeing different timelines. They need to go around saving people and collecting a team to help them. They find two of them quickly. Icheb and Naomi Wildman…. but 17 years in the future. They’ve been working on ways to study the time lapses for 17 years, and are willing to help. They also collect Seven, though a Seven who’s still Borg’d, of course. I bet the actress was THRILLED about that shit being put back on her.
There’s also some hints of people now learning of the future and possibly wanting to change it. The Doctor lets slip to Janeway about the future and she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t seem THRILLED about it. Parts of this episode also seem to be a way for people to make fun of some of the previous episode they were in. The Macrovirus, for example. And then they go into that episode with Captain Proton, my favorite! :D
Janeway is so checked out. Once they get out of this she goes “remind me to cancel Mr. Paris’ holodeck priveleges.” Very funny. They also keep bringing up the temporal prime directive and then Chakotay keeps ignoring it after bringing it up, telling Past Janeway more shit.
They find a future timeline, it looks like, with radiation. Tuvok does the Spock thing and dies while going “I have been and will always be your friend, live long and prosper”, and it rips Janeway apart. That “maybe I shouldn’t change the future” part of her brain is overwhelmed by the “fuck this shit” part, and Chokey has to talk her down, and tell her about how GOOD the crew it and what positives they’ve had. It works.
They just have one timeframe to deal with, and it’s the Seska timeframe. How can they defeat her? By taking all the people they’ve befriended from all timeframes, even Borg Seven, as they’re innoculated to Time Shenanigans and overwhelming her. Simple as that. It’s fun.
Chakotay fixes the timeline and everything is all good. He and Janeway have a dinner, and alls well that ends well.
For a Chakotay centric episode, I liked it. He wasn’t bad, just… neutral.
Lineage - VOY 8/10
That fucking image, jesus. EDIT: This was a CGI baby that was apparently too horrifying for even Imgur. Wow.
Torres is happy and friendly this morning. That’s weird, I don’t like it, something’s wrong. But then she stumbles, and Icheb scans her and is like “omg another lifesign, SHE HAS A PARASITE”. Seven looks at the scans and then is like “Nope, she’s just pregnant”. Hell of a way to find that out, holy moly.
The mood fluctuations are because human/klingon babies apparently cause some. Paris and Torres want to keep things quiet about this, they’re a bit overwhelmed. But everyone immediately finds out because of course they fucking do. If this episode was just “everyone reacts to them having a baby” I’d be fine with that, that sounds fun. But that horrible floating baby up there is looming over me like a bad omen. But there’s lots of fun little moments. Paris going to Tuvok asking for advice and Tuvok’s just like “Expect paradoxes”. Thanks bro.
Imagine going to the doctor and he’s like “Here’s a holographic extrapolation of your future daughter’s spine”. Anyways they extrapolate the whole baby from there, as you can see up above, and Torres starts to have some breakdowns about all this. She’s having flashbacks to her childhood. Its a lot of hatred about her Klingon self. And when she learns the Doctor can do pre-natal gene therapy, she goes and looks into what genes to remove…
She’s trying to remove all the Klingon out of her. She claims it’s all just cause she’s worried about health problems, but Paris immediately sees through the bullshit. And is IMMEDIATELY upset about it. When she can’t convince either him or the Doctor, she goes to Janeway and asks her to order the treatment, because “its what you did to Seven of Nine, so it’s fine”. Wow she’s trying to use ANY weapon she can to do this.
This is an interesting topic they’re tackling. Torres was traumatized because she was different as a kid from everyone else, because she’s from two different cultures, and they’re all from one culture. So she can have that not happen to her kid, should she? It makes sense she’d feel that way, it traumatized her. To everyone else, the multiculturalism is a strength and something to lean on.
We also see how her father handled it. Poorly. “You have to learn to be less sensitive”. Dog. No wonder she has problems several decades later. And that’s BEFORE she overheard her dad talk about how he regrets marrying her mom and having her. Holy hell. What a shitty dad.
The Doctor suddenly declares that they NEED to do the surgery to make the baby fully Human. Paris is confounded, and looks into it, and WOW she fucking changed his program so he’d do the surgery. That’s WILD, and kinda fucked. She does not handle having it interrupted well.
Janeway REALLY needs to hire a fucking therapist for this ship.
So yeah, Paris FINALLY gets it out of her, what it’s all about. It’s not just about being bullied as a kid for being different, it’s that her father LEFT THEM after everything, and never came back. Wooooow what a shitty dad. So she’s still traumatized by that, obviously, and also afraid of the future, that it’ll happen again, happen to Paris. That he’ll regret everything and leave them, because he can’t handle the cultural differences. Paris handles this very well, and convinces her of it.
Congrats to Voyager, no B plot, no weird space shenanigans, a fucking CHARACTER EPISODE. Holy shit. And in the end, she asks the Doctor if he’ll be the kids god father. We ALL went “AWWW” at it, that’s so sweet. Good episode.
Lineage - VOY 7.5/10
While being who they are in space, Voyager finds a ship about to explode. Teleport them, and the two damaged lifesigns, to sickbay. Whoops it was a prisoner ship, and the two prisoners hold sickbay hostage. Luckily, it’s Seven they’re holding hostage, and she immediately handles it. That same prisoner is like “let me go or I will kill every single one of you” so they’re not neccesarily nice prisoners.
They’re taking these prisoners to be executed. And now the ship is discussing if it’s right to kill them. The Doctor and Seven have this discussion. Yep, an episode about CAPITAL PUNISHMENT :).
It’s very subtle about the premise! Some of the prisoners seem pleasant enough, thanking Neelix for arguing for them to eat a good meal. Some, namely the one, is belligerent and says he’ll kill their children. So the alien cops start beating the shit out of him. They’re taken off the case of guarding the prisoners, but not before going “Commander Tuvok isn’t qualified to guard these prisoners!” Dude. The only reason Tuvok isn’t running this ship right now is because he doesn’t fucking want to.
The one nice prisoner explains to Neelix that he was arrested only because of racial profiling. Neelix is a soft easy mark. They use nanoprobes to fix the ultra violent one, and it fixes his sociopathy and now he’s feeling guilt for the first time. He fucking HATES it and begs them to take the nanoprobes out and let him die, because it’s better than this. Jesus.
We learn more of this judicial system. It favors the victims. No judges, victims and their families pass judgement. This episode is basically tackling TWO different subjects. First, of unfair capital judgement, but secondly, Iko, the violent one, is now literally a different person. Is he still the same person who killed people and should he be punished? Like, obviously it’s not right to like, change him this way, but it was an accident so that’s not the topic, it’s how to handle what happened. He has an answer, though. He thinks he should die for what he did.
They draft an appeal, because they think he no longer deserves to die, and he’s like “Take it back fuck that shit, let me die”. Seven argues that she also hurt and kileld people as a Borg, and wasn’t in control. Like he wasn’t either. He’s having none of it. Every argument here has a counter argument, actually being made by the person who’s being affected most by it. Not by like, cops. This gives the moral arguments a completely different look, and I prefer it.
It’s also about a lot of things. Seven feels like if she can save Iko, she can save herself. If he’s found non guilty, she won’t be either.
Then a tiny ship comes and attacks, knocking out power. How did this tiny thing hurt Voyager in any way? Cause the plot demands it, I guess. Anyways the prisoners escape, but Iko actually stops them, which causes the warden to be like “oh shit maybe he DID change…” and puts in an appeal. The “nice” prisoner, meanwhile, is the reason this all happened. He got to send a letter to his brother, who came and attacked them. And now he’s trying to do anything he can to get out of it. A shame.
Iko’s appeal is rejected. Even the Warden seems bothered by this. He has one final moment with Seven, who can barely look at him. “You were the first person to look me in the eye. It’s how I’d like to remember you.” It’s a good moment, but quite sad. Iko didn’t get the chance to be his own person.
WAY better than I expected. This might be the best of this kind of episode, the “alien penal system and we can’t judge how they work” kinda episodes. It handled it SHOCKINGLY well. It was realistic, and Human.
Prophecy - VOY 8.5/10
Voyager is cruisin’ maxin’ relaxin’ all cool when suddenly they’re attacked by some fucking Klingons. It’s a practically ancient D7 cruiser, which is a TOS era ship. They easily take it out, and it finally answers their hails. “Yo wtf stand down” “WE WILL NOT STAND DOWN TO SWORN ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE”. Dog. How long have you been out here? Is this a multigenerational ship? Cause I see no women on this bridge.
After they meet Torres, who is there to convince them they are not at war, they immediately blow up their own ship and strand themselves on Voyager. Why? Because they, as a weird religious sect, believe Torres’ child is the messiah. The Kuvah’magh. Oh boy! Torres is not amused. Neither is Paris for that matter.
There’s now 200 extra Klingons on board.
Don’t be a coward, Kim.
Anyways when the other Klingon leaders discover that Torres is only half Klingon, and that her kid is even MORE Human, they’re like “wow this was a mistake” and we’re about to get a religious war on our hands. The leader, the one who original came over, is like “We need to try to avoid religious war”. He’s a chill guy, over all. And it’s pretty clear he’s actually not really sure if she’s the Mother Mary either. But he doesn’t care. What he DOES care and believe is that his people will die out here if they don’t have hope, and this will give them hope. So he interprets the ancient scrolls in the way that will help his people the most. A pragmatic cultist.
He helps her both interpret the scrolls in a way that they’ll talk about her, and ALSO get back in touch with her Klingon side. She basically hasn’t done any Klingon customs since she was a kid, and it’s well known she’s not comfortable with her Klingon side. She needs a GOOD role model for Klingon customs.
There’s a lot of fun Klingon stuff here. One of them challenges Tom to a battle, but Janeway makes it stay nonlethal. Kim keeps trying to hide from the Hot Klingon Mommy. Coward. Neelix helps him out by making him look like a coward, and she starts going after Neelix instead. He is WAY more happy about this than Kim was. Neelix is not a coward.
“I see fear in your eyes, Human.” “The only Klingon I fear is my wife after a double shift.” That’s a good fucking line. Unfortunately, the fight is cancelled after the Klingon warrior gets tired and falls over dying. We now learn of the Nehret, a Klingon disease. They don’t even really view it as a disease, more of “old age”. It’s highly contagious, but only to Klingons. Uh oh. We have one of those. Two of those even, if you count the baby. And yes, they’re both infected. Unfortunately, the scrolls say the messiah is stronger than old age and disease. So now they’re CERTAIN she’s not the messiah, and decide to take over Voyager instead.
Their attempt to take over Voyager fails as Janeway and Paris take out like five armed Klingons alone. Damn, y’all, you didn’t send your best. The Nehret is cured shortly after, because the baby being mostly Human means she made an antivirus, basically. Alright, cool. So she IS the messiah! Yay! They find a place to settle and leave, but not before… this.
Neelix appears to have won Voyager.
Mostly just fun Klingon moments, I’m a fan.