LizstarTrek - Voyager Season 7 episodes 15 - 19
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!
The Void - VOY 8.5/10
While floating around aimlessly doing their thing, Voyager is pulled into a weird starless expanse by a gravitational surge, and are IMMEDIATELY attacked by a random ship. In the ensuing battle, 90% of their food stores and deuterium. Deuterium is a common fuel, you can find it anywhere… except here, apparently. Shortly after, another ship comes and is actually friendly! Its captain, a General Valen, explains that this is the Void. Ships cannot escape it. The only resources you can find are from the ships that come in here. Work with him, and they can survive longer by preying on the other ships. Give up on trying to escape.
Obviously they try to escape anyway. They have an ingenious plan to escape, but since they’re trying at the start of the episode, we know they’re gonna fail. They fail. Now low on power, with vultures circling them, they have to act quickly. They go after the ship that attacked them, but it’s already picked clean. They find a few things they can grab anyway, so they go in, and find someone who didn’t get picked up on the scans!
He can live with no atmosphere, is very skittish, and has no verbal skills. But he’s injured. They take him in, but he’s also VERY voracious and hungry. So is it a good idea to take him in now, while they’re so low on food already? Well, that’s just what we do.
Their food is now with Valen, the original guy they met. He has their food now and refuses to give it back, so they take it with force. But even with it, they won’t live long. Chokie and Tuvok are like “Maybe we should actually be evil and violent, cause otherwise we won’t live”. Janeway has a different idea. She’ll bring Federation ideals to this lawless wasteland. She starts a formal alliance, to share supplies. Yes, this will dwindle their supplies that are already slim, but it’s a noble idea.
It’s slow going for now. No one is “officially” joining. And Janeway keeps giving away shit to try and make friends. “The best way to get help is to give it”. Tuvok thinks she’s illogical. Seven thinks she’s inefficient. But we’ll see how this morality play works out. I respect it.
The Doctor names this weird creature they find. He’s very intelligent, but can’t communicate well. He’s called Fantome, after the Phantom of the Opera. Seven and the Doctor develop a way through tones and beeps to communicate.
After a ship appears and Voyager protects it, and another prospective member joins in to protect it, more ships begin ready to join, now that the alliance has some semblance of strength. We also learn about Fantome’s people. They are “vermin” who reside here, apparently. The other members of the alliance view them as a drain on resources. Janeway offers to take them onto Voyager.
Things hit a low as their possible chance of survival involves going against the alliance ideals. They have to exile a member from the alliance over this. Making a Federation is difficult. Janeway isn’t bothered with kicking him out, she’s bothered with taking him in the first place. He was bigoted the moment we saw him so she takes this as a sign she should keep her ideals strict. This guy IMMEDIATELY tries to form alliances with others to attack Voyager btw, so y’know.
They need to escape before their enemies can attack. They tell the void creatures, Fantome’s people, that if they want to stay here they should leave. They want to stay here, it’s their home, but want to help Voyager after all the help they gave them. So they beam out… to the engine rooms of the enemy ships, just as they attack. We get messages from the enemy ships… musical beeps. Genuinely so pleasant to hear. Great job, Fantome.
They manage to punch it out into normal space. The lights finally turn on in the ship. Thank God, it’s like we were watching Discovery or Picard.
Fun episode
Workforce, Part 1 - VOY 6/10
We start with Janeway walking through a factory in a jumpsuit. She appears to be in Riven. She reports to work, excited to start a new job. Her boss seems nice, and she’s very qualified to work here, so she’s treated well. Oh boy! Wait why the hell is Janeway working in a factory
We also see Seven! Or excuse me, Annika Henson. She’s the new efficiency coordinator. She gets in on Janeway and some guy chatting it up and tells them to cut out the fraternizing. We also see Paris trying to get a job at a bar. So apparently, everyone doesn’t have their memories, and always believes they’ve been here? And then we see a jovial, friendly, laugihng Tuvok. Holy crap, I hate it. It’s uncanny valley.
Janeway’s coworker is coming onto her pretty strong. Janeway, please stop falling in love with mediocre men. Seven is literally right there. She can help you with… coordinating your efficiency. He also helps her keep up to date on her “innoculations”, regular vaccines against background radition. Oh I’m sure. And Tuvok having a PTSD episode about the innoculations is nothing big I’m sure.
Chokie, Neelix, and Kim are returning home from a long away mission to find Voyager is… not anywhere. They EVENTUALLY find it to find the Doctor is the only one there. He’s in Emergency Commander Hologram mode. Basically, Voyager hit some kind of mine and got inundated with radiation. Everyone left on escape pods and they left the Doctor behind to try and fix things as the ECH. She abandoned the ship REAL fuckin’ quick. He hid in a nebula, and any attempt to leave, he finds ships hunting for him, their signatures matching the mine.
Of course, they’re all captured and given these innoculations that dull their memories. Memories are still creeping back, though. Tuvok can KIND of remember that he knew Janeway, but when he brings it up, he just creeps her out.
Chokie discovers where the crew are being kept. An M class planet, but when he goes to explain what happened to them, the officials are like “None of these people know who you are? They’re all working comfortable happy lives at the same power plant, why would they want to join your ship? Go look for labor elsewhere”. Apparently there’s a severe labor shortage. Neelix and Chakotay decide to find jobs down there.
This episode basically keeps jumping between Chakotay and Neelix trying to find the crew, while we jump between the members of the crew basically living alternate universe existences. Paris works at a bar, hitting on single pregnant mother Torres, but offers to just be her friend to help her through the hard times. Janeway gets in a mediocre uninteresting romance. Tuvok has an existential crisis and mind melds with Seven of Nine. You know, normal things.
Chokie and Neelix straight up abduct Belanna in the middle of an alleyway, which causes Voyager to immediately be fired upon as they try and run away. And then Chakotay runs away, and it ends uh, with Chakotay standing by a random railing making the one single expression he can make. Alright then. How thrilling.
To be continued.
Workforce, Part 2 - VOY 7.5/10
We continue where we left off. Tuvok getting his brain scrambled. Torres back on Voyager, but they can’t fix her immediately. Janeway moving in with some boring guy. Chakotay on the run from the cops. But we also have the cops hunting for him now, and closing in, and we also have two new character. Both doctors, treating Tuvok for “Disphoria Syndrome”. I got that too, but I dunno if I trust them to help me with it. One is less willing to scramble brains about it, but it IS the suggested procedure.
Chakotay is being a creepy mother fucker. He’s hiding in Janeway’s room in the dark with a gun, injured. Creepy, dog. But he just heard she was moving out and was using the apartment to hide, tbf. But after a bit of talking, she actually is willing to HELP him. And when he slips she’s actually the captain, at first she’s against helping him anymore, but when he just… dermal regenerates his face back from plastic surgery. Just that easy?? But once she tells her boyfriend about it, he alerts the authorities aaaand he’s captured. His cop assigned to him, the one working on the case, is suddenly relieved of duty and Chakotay taken away to Section 6, brain surgery basically. The pieces are very, VERY obvious, and FINALLY people are making it out. The nicer doctor figures it out, Seven is working with the cop who’s starting to piece things together, and things MIGHT possibly work out. But the evil doctor is doing a LOT of illegal shit and has a lot of backing from a few powerful people. Unfortunately, nice doctor is captured and being reprogrammed too.
Everyone teams up to work together. The resulting scenes are climactic and honestly, quite exciting. It works out in the end, the conspiracy is clear, and all’s well that ends well. Janeway’s boyfriend is given a reporter cause his supervisor was fired. Something about illegal abductions and human trafficking? They give a last hug goodbye, and that’s the end. Thank you, Bland Love Interest #7.
This one felt a bit better than the first. Had some good moments!
Human Error - VOY 4/10
In the cold open, Seven plays piano out of makeup. It was a little jarring, cause it just cuts out of nowhere.
We have Belanna’s baby shower. It’s cute with some good fun lines and gags. Seven is there, without her implants. She’s being… normal and pleasant! Then she’s called to Astrometrics. End program. She’s been trying to improve her social skills, awww. When she’s ACTUALLY invited to the baby shower, she’s a little anxious about it.
SEVEN OF NINE IN UNIFORM OHHHH NOOOOOO.
I AM GAAAAAAAAY.
She’s actually quite good with the practice. Seeing her be open and friendly is REALLY nice. She makes a date with Hologram Chakotay and despite it being Chokie, it’s so nice. It kinda feels like how I expect her to be when she’s older, in Picard. UNFORTUNATELY, this episode is kind of ruined by the background information. This episode was a bet. Beltran, Chakotay’s actor, was dating Seven’s actress at the time, and made a bet to the screen writer he couldn’t make a good romance between Chakotay and Seven. It’s… weirdly uncomfortable of a concept to me.
In the real life, Seven appears to be… not as good at everything as she is in the holodeck. She’s avoiding regenerating. She gives a baby shower gift at a VERY inoportune time, as Belanna is trying to do warp core surgery. Then she asks her about her hair care routine.
Okay. I am uninterested in this romance. Like, just on sheer CONCEPT, I do not like it. And like, Jeri Ryan is doing her best, but her making out with a hunk of white bread is not titilating to me. I like seeing Seven trying to be and act more Human, but not if it means she has to make out with Chakotay.
I also don’t feel like you should be allowed to make crew members on the holodeck. And CERTAINLY not to date and fuck them. We had this problem with Barclay already. Are we just supposed to be okay with it now cause it’s a hot autistic woman instead of a goofy autistic man??
She’s in there way too much. Shirking her duty to be in there. 49 hours in 6 days. Damn, imagine like, playing games or something that much, ha ha ha… hah. She also LIES to Janeway about why she’s in there so much, when Janeway’s like “can you try to actually do your job please, your fuck ups almost blew up the ship”. Janeway is VERY understanding.
She tries to break up with Holo Chokie. He doesn’t handle it well, because of course he wouldn’t. It causes a weird scramble in her system and she basically suffers some kind of attack. Her implants are not working right. When she comes to, the Doctor coaxes it out of her. She also explains why she chose Chakotay to date. “He was a good choice. He has many admirable qualities”. We won’t explain what any of them are. Also, that’s really just like saying “He was better than nothing I guess”. Which is maybe accurate.
The Doctor does some scans, and determines that when she gets too emotionally stimulated, her implants cause her brain to shut down. He can fix it with several difficult surgeries, but she refuses. These holograms were just fantasties, anyway. It’s kinda sad, but that’s just… the way the episode ends. With her deciding not to engage with humanity like that. Hmm. It feels like this episode has no real reason to exist, other than just being a way for a guy to win a bet.