Prototype

DVD, Voyager S2 (Prototype)

Robots. We don't get many of them on these series'. Androids, Cyborgs, holocharacters, yes, but a simple robot? Not often. There are plenty of them in this episode, two sides of a never-ending war, but to begin with we don't know anything, even what's going on, as the decision was taken to be a little more experimental with the teaser, which shows the robot's-eye view of floating adrift, beaming up and being poked and prodded by Starfleet officers, only revealing what it looks like when it focuses in on a monitor displaying a video link of itself. Director Jonathan Frakes, as ever, does a good job on the visual side. There were some well-shot scenes that stick in my mind, such as B'Elanna's late-night visit to her mechanical man, shown from high up in Engineering with the warp core throbbing away and evoking the empty night hours suitably. I particularly enjoyed the shuttle sequence when Paris flys towards the robot ships as they battle each other, the tiny shuttle vastly out-sized by the others, the opposing robot craft suddenly looming over the other robot's vessel, like a storm cloud rising above a mountain. And the tiny shuttle is heading into this maelstrom!

The simple, clean design of the robots, though it could be seen as a generic, sci-fi style, emphasised their seeming innocence with the blank faces and equally measured, unemotional voices. The clothing, something that might be considered extraneous gave them a more relatable humanoid texture, a uniform design to mark them out as servants, and the subconscious idea they could be hiding something. When Torres gets in a reference to Data it's a really good tying together of the universe, though as the ship is lost in the Delta Quadrant B'Elanna didn't know the ship Data was on had been destroyed by then, so at that precise moment he wouldn't have been serving as she assumed.

The design of the ships, pyramidal, formidable, were quite different compared with the 'Star Trek' style we usually see, though they still seemed a part of the universe thanks to their blinky lights and windows. Voyager was pummeled again, but this was long before the days when they regularly went nacelle to nacelle with the Borg, or could take on multiple enemies with a snap of Janeway's coffee-stained fingers. It was a simpler time, when the crew still hadn't been defined; Neelix is there to give advice to a weary Torres, Janeway has an understanding chat with her engineer at the end, for once not giving a crewmember a 'chewing out' over disobeying orders, since this time Torres was under duress and thought she was doing the best she could for her ship by co-operating. It was also before she realised the terrible mistake she'd made in helping the Pralor robots.

The story of artificial lifeforms destroying their makers wasn't new to the franchise, as I think Ruk in 'TOS' was responsible for killing off the 'Old Ones' as he called them, but again, it's probably an old staple of the genre. I'm not sure why the Pralor ships didn't destroy Voyager when it was left dead in the water as it would have saved them having to worry about it. If they were intelligent they'd have realised B'Elanna wouldn't have helped if her shipmates were annihilated. Rick Worthy, heard as one of the robot voices, would later be seen as a member of the Equinox crew, and also played a Klingon in 'Enterprise' if I remember correctly, as well as appearing in 'Star Trek: Insurrection'.

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