Scorpion

DVD, Voyager S3 (Scorpion)

The stakes are high in this, the series' equivalent of 'The Best of Both Worlds' as its previous Borg story, 'Unity,' was to 'Q Who.' Both were an introduction to the Borg on their respective series, as both of these were a big two-part, end of season cliffhanger that changed things forever. If the crew of Voyager could have had their wounds healed by the episode after, just as the Enterprise crew did in 'Family,' going back to Earth for recuperation, their troubles would all have been over. As it was, they weren't as personally troubled as Picard and his colleagues, but being alone, away from the Federation, they had to sort their own problems out without any assistance. Not that Picard felt any less alone since the fleet was decimated by one Borg Cube, and the way they deal with the Borg here may be one reason why on this viewing I didn't see it as quite the unassailable classic I used to think it was. It doesn't have the same qualities as 'Both Worlds,' instead relying on interpersonal conflict (and this isn't 'DS9' - score one up for 'Voyager'!), and a vast scope for the action, though one less immediately pressing for the Alpha Quadrant. They needed to play up the fact that Species 8472 wants to destroy everything in our galaxy, rather than it being a brief line of dialogue from Kes, and they also needed to have the crew display greater apprehension at the prospect of entering Borg space. After all, Wolf 359 was only about seven years ago, so all our characters would have been more than aware of the implications the Borg posed, from personal memory.

Instead, and there's a case to be made that these are trained Starfleet officers on a state of the art starship, so of course they're going to go into things confidently, they do seem overconfident at the prospect of a bust up with the Borg. This isn't just one Borg Cube any more though, this is the heart of their territory, and I'd have liked to hear some of the non-Starfleet characters' views on this most fearsome of enemies: what does Neelix, denizen of the Delta Quadrant, know of them, or Kes, and the Maquis members that didn't have as much training, how do they feel about this route? Another side question might be why would the Borg restrict themselves to an area of space, no matter how big, and why wouldn't they have continued assimilating races around their space, so extending their dominion forever and eventually enveloping the Delta Quadrant itself - 'space is big,' must be the answer, but even then, they have Transwarp capability, and how long does it take to assimilate a race, especially as each race adds more drones with which to assimilate others, which would increase the Borg's rate of assimilation exponentially over time. It must be that they have such a humungous infrastructure that millions of drones are needed to keep all the machinery and technology ticking along. But if that's so, how can it be that they only learn anything through assimilation as they'd need to be highly skilled to keep increasingly intricate technology of a thousand new races working together? And can they only have come into contact with 8,472 races in all that time of Transwarping around the galaxy?

These questions may never be answered (even when Trek returns to TV, though we already missed out on an origin story in 'Enterprise' Season 5, before that series was cancelled), but one vital and chilling inquiry was certainly solved in this episode: who could be more powerful than the Borg? While it would have been fantastic to have seen the Changelings of the Dominion take on the cybernetic force (and if the two series' writing teams had been closer, maybe we'd have got that if we'd seen the Jem'Hadar battle fleet that the Prophets conveniently disposed of, in the Delta Quadrant on an episode of 'Voyager,' but sadly not every great idea comes to fruition), we had to make do with Species 8472, or the Undine as they were later non-canonically monickered thanks to 'Star Trek Online.' They were undoubtedly a bold and impressive creation, the first fully computer-generated humanoid race (the macrovirus earlier in the season was the first fully CG creature, but they were nowhere near as detailed), and to date, the only one specifically made that way (excepting Xindi), as far as I can remember - you'd think their invention would have opened the floodgates to CGI races on Trek, but it wasn't so, and we still haven't seen a purely CG main character of a Trek TV series. Probably because it's still so much easier and cheaper to slap prosthetics on a suffering human than it is for a team of designers to build and operate a CG model, and for all the time and effort that goes into it, maybe the rewards of having something more alien aren't worth the hassle. Trek is about humanity, after all…

Species 8472 was a strong design, and perhaps the fact they were used so sparingly, with only a further three appearances, I believe, may have been one of the reasons they still seem a potent storytelling tool. Even they were to get the humanitarian understanding treatment that all Trek's villains get, down the line in Season 5's 'In The Flesh,' which does water down their threat to overrun our galaxy, but for now the stakes seem impossibly high, with streams of their bioships pouring into our space, forcing Janeway to be creative (with help from John Rhys-Davies as Leonardo Da Vinci - I really wanted to see Janeway go with him to the monks and pray in supplication over the problem!), for a solution: join forces with the Borg. We don't find out in this part of the story whether the Borg will go for it, or whether Voyager is just next on the menu, one of the most effective parts of the cliffhanger ending - I was so engrossed in the story I was surprised when events ended so abruptly, a planet exploding behind Voyager as it's towed away by a Borg ship, and this ain't no clamping fine, though whether they're captive or ally is left up in the air, with a headlong mad dash by the usually calm Borg, as fellow ships are caught in the shockwave and blasted apart. Such an image of chaos from the unstoppably strong almost giving the impression of panic in their haste to escape destruction, and absolutely thrilling - no wonder this episode is often thought of as one of the series' best.

It's missing the Borg Queen, that vocalisation of the Borg's means and motives, and after she was annihilated in the film 'First Contact,' it's no wonder. Though I don't think it's ever been confirmed onscreen, you have to assume that the Queen is ultimately as expendable as her drones - she returns after being burnt up and her mechanical spine snapped in two by the angry hands of Captain Picard, which means she must be taken from a specific race, another member of which is promoted to Queen whenever the current monarch is killed, so the Borg are never without their central voice. This also means that you can never truly destroy the Borg simply by getting rid of the Queen (and now I think about it, how fascinating it would have been if we could have seen two Queens fighting it out over who takes the position, maybe using factions of the Borg to attack each other. In a new Trek series, come on, you have to do it!), but I actually quite liked the return to the 'old' Borg, the faceless Borg, the Borg that were a hive mind, not controlled meekly by an imposing voice in total control. It makes it harder for Janeway to negotiate, but did she really have a leg to stand on anyway? It seems highly unlikely, with all their vast technological advancement, that the Borg wouldn't have been able to figure out what the Doctor did about their nanoprobes, or that deleting the Doc would have meant they were unable to retrieve the information to fight 8472!

The Doctor looks understandably perturbed at the prospect of being used as leverage against the Borg's good wishes. If they don't agree to the Captain's terms he'll be erased, but he needn't have been so worried since if that scenario came to pass the crew would all have been assimilated anyway and he'd be the last to go, which would have been a lonely end. He does face Janeway's plan without comment, stoically swallowing any pride he might usually display, just as everyone else on the crew has their jobs to do and steadfastly prepares for the tribulation ahead. Though I do find it disappointing that there wasn't more fear about the Borg on show, at the same time it's admirable to see them behind their Captain and unquestioningly following procedure and accepting that if she says they can do something, they'll do what they can to make it happen. Even more argumentative members of the crew such as the aforementioned Doc, or Torres, only look at what's possible rather than pointing out that if the entire Starfleet couldn't take out one Cube, how is their little ship going to face off against untold thousands of the things? That is, all but one voice of reason. And no, it's not Mr. Tuvok who used to be so good as Janeway's advisor and confidant. Her friendship with the Vulcan is one of the things that slowly got played down and never really reached the heights of the early seasons, which is a shame as their scene in 'Caretaker' was one of the best, allowing Janeway to show weakness and a vulnerability she couldn't show in front of the crew.

However, this Janeway has no weakness, she's tough as iron, hardening herself to the task ahead, steeling to do what no one else had done, and take her crew through Borg space, single-mindedly intent on one purpose: to control their future by destroying their past! Sorry, no, that's the trailer for 'First Contact'… But she is ruthlessly determined: if 'the weak will perish,' Janeway makes herself strong; the origins of the Janeway she became in later seasons. Most of the Captains go through this Season 3 baptism of fire, whether Sisko facing off the Dominion, Picard's Borg experience, and even Archer changing, through his mission against the Xindi, all are forged in extreme circumstances so that by Season 4 they've grown the beard, shaved the head, or whatever other growing up metaphor you want to stick in there. For Janeway, fortunately, it was cutting the hair rather than shaving it off (although that might have been an interesting look…), but that's to come next season and I'm sure there'll be something to say about it then. The point is, Tuvok wasn't seen to be the person she confides in any more, it's as if she's become a Borg herself, going without food and sleep as if to make herself more angry and fiery than her normally calm and measured self. She needs to do something to be big enough to do what needs to be done, and only Chakotay, still clearheaded, makes any opposition to her tunnel vision. If Tuvok had been seen with her that would have meant she wasn't alone as she claims to be, and might have lost some of the drama, plus I think he would have agreed with Chakotay that the odds were ridiculously stacked against them, since he's already pointed out security measures weren't going to last long.

Unfortunately, Janeway wasn't going to be reasonable, perhaps seeing this bizarre situation of the Borg running scared from a greater enemy as the perfect time to pass through the most dangerous region yet encountered. And you have to admit the timing of Species 8472's attack was incredibly useful to Voyager (maybe it was all a conspiracy, and secretly on Voyager there's a Section 31 operative in covert contact with home through alien technology, and 31 arranged for 8472 to keep the Borg busy in exchange for something - or maybe a 31 agent from the future came back to start this war between the Borg and 8472 in order for Voyager to pass through?), because otherwise they wouldn't have stood a chance, being outgunned, out-powered, out-everything-ed by the Borg who could chuck fifteen Cubes at them any moment. Of course it all makes more sense later on when we learn that the new Queen actually was active at this point (so why not show herself, was she on hiatus or was it deemed too close to the film?), because she wanted Seven of Nine to go aboard and integrate onto the ship, so when you consider that, it makes more sense that Voyager could last more than five minutes in Borg space. But Chakotay didn't know that, and all he could see was a risk too great. I would've agreed with him about not going that way, even if I felt he was too ready to suggest finding a nice little planet to settle (perhaps remembering fun times of building bathtubs and headboards from the end of last season, in 'Resolutions' - that's what he'd prefer to be doing, because he's a peaceful man).

Settling down wasn't an option, their mission statement was to get home, and that's what they were going to do until it became impossible to do so, but I'm sure they could have found another route around Borg space - the series might even have gone on a few seasons longer! As good as the tension between Captain and First Officer was, it was sad to see them go from close friends, supporting each other and preparing for trouble, to a wedge driving between them because Janeway can't accept Chakotay thinking differently, their interactions turning frosty and strained (though this Chakotay wasn't going to mutiny like his holographic counterpart did in the previous episode!). He still supports her by doing his duty, though it's against his will and conscience, but this was her flexing her reckless muscle, gambling and finding that it paid off. This would be the change, perhaps for the worse, in the calm, scientific Captain she'd begun as, to someone that took chances. But perhaps this situation, ship and crew demanded someone who could be that, and she was just stepping up to the task in the only way she could see, becoming the hard woman. It would be a strategy that would pay off, but perhaps she could have done with a harder First Officer, one that was able to stand up to her and bring her down on regulations more strongly rather than wanting to support her whatever happened? Who knows what would have been the perfect combination, except that it seemed to work, as uncomfortable as it was.

One thing that works very well in this episode is the lighting. Not ordinarily something to look to in making an episode great (except perhaps for the occasional episode, such as 'Empok Nor' on 'DS9'), but when it's done right it can elevate an episode, or solidify the mood. There are some closeups that are quite different to what we usually see - an extreme one of Janeway showing only her eyes down to her mouth, set resolute and eyes glittering with danger. There are also the scenes aboard the Cube, with great shots such as Chakotay's face, eyes hidden in deep sockets of shadow with Tuvok and Kim behind him. The mood is evocative and serves to heighten the dread of 8472 when they know something's aboard and fast approaching from the shadows. When even the Borg are scurrying away from approaching danger, like rats in a mine that's about to collapse, you know things are bleak. Having Harry, the young member of the crew, be the victim of 8472 and suffering severe pain and injury from the attack, makes things seem worse - an innocent caught in a war zone. When Janeway goes to order him to fight as he lies in sickbay it reminded me of the agitated Sisko in 'The Ship' when he orders the dying Muniz to stay alive, both effective demonstrations of a Captain's ultimate lack of power.

I'd forgotten that we actually got to see aboard a bioship, reminiscent of Gomtuu in 'Tin Man' on 'TNG' (also Lord Jabu-Jabu's belly in 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,' something I always associate with large biological entities to be entered!), though as far as I know their ships weren't sentient like that or the ship in 'Farscape.' We're also treated to another titbit about the Mysterious Breen, as are scattered throughout the various series', though this one remains unproven as we see their ships in 'DS9' Season 7 and they don't look particularly organic. More misinformation from the secretive ones? Might not have been the best choice to show a member of 8472 using what looked like a touch screen, just like any race from our galaxy would, as they'd been built up as this far more alien alien, and to see this hoof, or claw tapping away in Kes' vision made them seem more relatable. At least Kes' powers were well-used in this one, making her character invaluable in having an understanding of what was going on that no other character (Tuvok, at a push, if they really had no other option, might have served in the same capacity), could, and without her the story might have been more difficult to explain. They were using their resources, it's just a shame she didn't get this treatment more often, having been allowed to fall down the back of the story sofa too much, because when used correctly she was unique to the series, like Deanna Troi to hers, she had this specific role that could be tapped when appropriate, but had much more potential because we knew so little about her race.

She would leave after only two more episodes, though for what reason remains unknown (I thought the long-haired look she changed to in this half of the season had been to hide her ears so she didn't have to go through the discomfort of the makeup, but I could distinctly make out the Ocampan ears in one shot, at least, so now I'm not sure how often she wore them or not!). I'll go into this more when I review 'The Gift,' but when I first watched the series I didn't really mind her going as I didn't much enjoy her character - only on subsequent viewings did I come to appreciate her so much more. If it came down to choosing one character to leave, I really don't know who I would have gone for since I like them all, but there are suggestions Harry Kim might have been killed off, and I can see the series doing okay without him (though who would be the O'Brien-type to be killed or put through the wringer on a regular basis?!), as he was probably the least developed over the series, in the same vein as other young characters, Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko. But there was a good friendship between him and Tom Paris, and if he had died this episode really would have lacked an essential scene of Tom visiting his buddy in his hour of need. Especially as we've seen Paris as a medic, so he could have offered his services to the Doc, showing how much he cared for his friend, even if the Doc didn't need his assistance.

Otherwise, most people are integrated quite well into the story, banding together, carrying out their duties, and pulling through when necessary. Maybe more character scenes as pairs discussing their impending doom were in order, but you can't fault the action, with an impressive array of Borg Cubes (whose destruction looks meatier than previous CG explosions), as well as a stream of bioships, this is large-scale space action done properly, Voyager tossed around like a lifeboat in the wake of a flotilla of whales. It makes them seem insignificant, and yet they have the answer through using their brains, not mindlessly taking all that's in their path, as the Borg do. And Harry is responsible for saving the galaxy when you look at it that way, since he was the test subject for the Doctor to discover how to fight Species 8472. Torres too, has a brainwave, rescuing the Away Team when she can't get them out, by coming up with a skeletal lock - that's all well and good as long as you don't just beam out the bones! One bit of tech that seems beyond Voyager's capability, however, is their long-range probe. They sent one out to scout ahead which stopped transmitting once it reached Borg space, but how could it be faster than Voyager itself to be able to get further than them? I suppose Voyager would have made stops here and there, and side trips to planets for supplies, so the probe must have had time to get ahead.

'Scorpion,' and its parable about the scorpion and the fox (which I'd heard also on 'Starsky & Hutch,' in 'Texas Longhorn'), was a great tale with a great sting in the tail. Stakes this high were the only way to live up to last season's cliffhanger when the Kazon took over the ship and left the crew stranded, not to mention the previous great Borg two-parter, 'Descent' (only joking, I meant 'The Best of Both Worlds'!). The key was in having character scenes as they did between Janeway and Chakotay, and in there being so much danger: this time they couldn't threaten Earth, so Voyager was the next best thing. Perhaps it's easier to be casually indifferent these days when it comes to big-bang-buck action, since we see that mindlessly played out in the Abrams films, so that may be why I don't quite consider it in the best-ever category as I used to. But it is still a rollicking, exciting ride, the Borg back to being the perilous force of danger they were in their best episode and film appearances, and we get Janeway reading a report from Captain Picard, with Chakotay joking around with her, saying she was doing an impression. There isn't a lot more you could want. A little, but not a lot.

****

Prey

DVD, Smallville S8 (Prey)

Some resolution looks to be in the offing as this episode rolls along, with Davis Bloom, friendly neighbourhood paramedic, in the frame of our suspicions as the man behind a massacre at the Ace of Clubs (where else!), among other violent murders in the city. We've already seen him writhing around on the ground as some kind of mutant, whether meteor infected or not. I actually thought of him early on, before he was even part of the story, as that would make sense - the series isn't shy of bringing in a new character, then making them a dangerous menace in the shadows after a while, just look at Adam from Season 3, or Jason from Season 4, but as they've been so open about Davis being more than he seems, my initial thoughts turned away from him. It would be too obvious if he turned out to be the attacker, and I was proved right. Or was I? As they like to do, there's a twist at the very end where it seems possible that Davis was responsible for some, or at least one of the killings, after all. I don't buy his fascination with Chloe, though. Unless he's a completely immoral person, he must be sensitive that she's spoken for and is to be married to Jimmy, so it's very wrong of him to be asking her searching questions about their friendship!

I was glad to see Jimmy involved in a real way for this story, not just a victim or someone to fight and make up with Chloe, but doing his job as a photographer. Room was made for him by not featuring either Miss Mercer (though her lackey meets with the meteor freak in prison at the end - like Lex she wants to bring these outcast villains together; my, how original), Lois Lane or Oliver Queen. It seems they can't create a storyline that contains all the disparate pieces of the series, and it must be the most separated cast I've seen. Lois' absence was explained away as an assignment, or something, and Queen and his gang were said to be unavailable for some reason, but it's just touched on enough to make you wonder why (except the obvious reason is that there are too many people and not enough air time to feature them all, plus it would make things too easy for Clark), but it's better than no reference to them at all. One ally Clark did have was his Martian friend, as Chloe refers to him, and incredibly he actually gets a name from Clark, who calls him Jones, though not to his face. Is this a name Clark just picked at random, or was decided upon between them, or has it been used before? I don't recall him ever being given a name, mainly because he tends to only interact with his charge, Kal-El, but it's a development of some kind, even if we don't get resolution to the Davis story.

Chloe proves a true friend to the paramedic, persuading him that he couldn't be a murderer because he helps people. It would also make sense since as far as we know he doesn't have a background of leaving carnage in his wake and leads a respectable life in a highly qualified job, but it's all too easy to believe in someone 'different' as being a likely suspect to kill when they lose control of themselves, like a DC version of The Incredible Hulk. Hulk wasn't the only hero (or super-powered character, I'm not sure he could be described as a hero), coming to mind in this episode, because for the first time we see Clark Kent from the history of Superman, who starts out saving people without any costume to disguise himself (maybe his Superman should wear glasses?), but stays up into the night to monitor police frequencies and crash any villains' parties he can, saving the weak and vulnerable. In fact the style he was doing it in, zipping in and out without even being seen, and the fact that city streets are dark and slick, made me think more of Batman. If only they could have got the Dark Knight into the series, that would have been exciting! But it's pretty exciting seeing him leap a tall building in a single bound, another Superman trait before he was retconned into being able to fly - we've seen Clark make giant leaps before, but never up onto the top of a building, so that was something special.

The lacklustre ending was a lot less special, limited by a TV series budget, to Clark tossing a tyre at the shadow creature (which I was at first considering to be Jones, being the only other recurring character reintroduced, then a Phantom from the Zone), which knocks it out, revealing one of Chloe's Isis Foundation members. Jimmy didn't even question Clark arriving, or whether he saw anything, and it comes back to that old thing of people not suspecting Clark of being more than a humble farm boy (or a minor reporter as he is now - his claim to be a reporter at Davis' accusations of being on scene at murders before anyone else was a bit weak, as he's more of a tea boy for Lois than a real member of the press), or not for a long time after so many odd things have happened involving Clark. Also taking me back to old episodes: the freak-of-the-week format beloved of the early seasons, that was mainly edged out except for occasional episodes after that. It was quite a good one thanks to lots of suspects and it brought some tension between various parties. On second thoughts the arguments weren't a good thing about other seasons where Clark would charge in and accuse Lex, Lana, Chloe, or whomever, or they would accuse him and it turned into a miserable soap. I like it better when they work together to solve things, but maybe because we've seen less of the drama between characters this season, I didn't mind it. Chloe did have a point about sticking up for the meteor infected, and it was good to see the Foundation actually doing its job rather than being a high-tech office sometimes used to work out clues.

I'd forgotten how often Clark used to butt heads with people as he's truly been quite mild-mannered this season, on the bottom rung of a journalistic career and often overshadowed by Lois or Chloe. So I liked how they used him in this one, and the return of his guilt at not being able to save everyone from everything, something that used to be quite an issue. His helper, Jones, (as we'll call him from now on, if that is his real name…), shows up in time to be of some assistance in keeping the police off his trail as he does his good Samaritan work. How does he do this? He's joined the force himself! How did he do this? He's got top sources to help him and that's all he's telling. Well, if you really wanted to help Clark… I'd forgotten Jones had lost his powers, so was glad of the reminder, which explains why he's hanging around doing the mundane job of a police detective, but it could be a ripe addition to the mix if they use him properly.

Jimmy's the latest character to meet Davis for the first time, and instantly wants a favour - are people really allowed to just ride along with a paramedic like that? I suppose Jimmy is a fully fledged member of the press, even if he does look like a child. What didn't work so well in the episode was people having arguments in populated areas like a corridor at Metropolis General Hospital, or the offices of the Daily Planet where you can see other people in the background or walking past. Not the best place to have accusatory conversations about murder or secrets! While it wasn't quite the fruition of the Davis storyline I had first expected, I quite enjoyed the mix this episode had to offer, although it needed some contemporary music to drive home the important points, which the series so rarely does now. Interesting fact from Chloe, too, about her having documented three hundred and twenty-seven meteor freaks since ninth grade (a little odd that Clark reminds her of their friendship of eight years, as if he was going to remember and say the exact number of years at a time like that - and didn't they know each other before the series started, so wouldn't it be longer?), yet she's not been able to help a single one. I'm not sure that's true, there must have been one or two happy endings along the way that aren't immediately popping into my mind. I wonder if that was an accurate count from all the ones featured in episodes and/or spinoff material?

***

Worst Case Scenario

DVD, Voyager S3 (Worst Case Scenario)

Worst case scenario, it wouldn't work - going back to the Maquis and Seska, and the crew's early months of their mission would be a drag. In fact it worked well and is great fun, more than I remembered - this is down to the fact that much of the episode is taken up with the crew having fun before the danger manifests. This story could have been done in a number of ways: written so it stays in the Holodeck the whole time with Seska's modifications activated from the start - perhaps Tuvok would have been the first to go through the program rather than B'Elanna? Or there could have been no threat, remaining a lighthearted comedy with various members of the crew experiencing the uprising in different ways (Tom must have got carried away a bit as he tells Torres he's on duty in less than an hour, but later seems to have been stuck in the holding cell for an hour, unless he turned up late for his shift, or this was actually another time). Not remembering exactly what happened  I was half expecting to see several more of the crew's attempts to tackle the story, but we only got to see Torres and Paris, though others talk about what they did, or planned to do, as if they're all discussing the latest computer game of today! This part of the episode is a really nice ensemble piece with the main characters having fun in each other's company (whether real or holographic), and reminding us (if Janeway's comments about being head of a community weren't enough), that this is a family of people, not 'just' a starship crew.

That feeling of family was something the writers had wanted early on, to emulate the popular style of 'TNG,' and no doubt, hopefully, its success. This came at the price of integrating the Maquis crew too quickly and easily into the wider Starfleet crew, something often cited as being a lost opportunity for drama. I agree with this view, but what people seem to forget is episodes like this, in which the Maquis, though amicably part of the wider ship, can still be used to generate drama (such as 'Repression' in which another Maquis booby trap causes trouble, and it's centred around Tuvok again - those Maquis really didn't like him, did they!), not to mention several episodes of the early seasons that dealt with Maquis who weren't happy with their lot. Most notable of all was Seska, the font of all evil in which the Maquis' negative qualities found their home, becoming a recurring villain with the Kazon. If only she'd joined another race, I wonder whether she'd have had more success in her schemes. She and the Kazon were a success because they managed to do what no one else had, and oust Captain Janeway and her captive crew from control of Voyager, so it could be said that Seska was the crew's, and specifically, Janeway's most deadly nemesis. Unquestionably in the early seasons, though there's an argument to be heard that the Borg became the series' strongest opponents later.

What if Seska had joined the Vidiians, that other recurring race of villainy? They might have been just as victorious in taking the prize of Voyager, and when Seska dies at the end of 'Basics, Part II' they might have had the capability to revive her - she could have continued to be a plague on the tail of Voyager! Yet that would also have been the end of the series because the Vidiians wouldn't have made the mistake of stranding the crew on a planet, they would have harvested them, and probably Seska too, so it wouldn't have worked out. And it would be hard to take Seska continually doing the same thing, returning with another ally in another part of space, so death or dishonour was the right choice for her, especially as they could have their Seska, and kill her too! We get to see the former Cardassian-dressed-as-Bajoran spy once again as part of a little present she left behind. This is exactly the way Cardassians always operated as episodes of 'DS9' showed: if they were leaving somewhere they'd make sure to plant booby traps ('Babel'; 'Civil Defence'; 'Empok Nor'), so she was true to her heritage. And how good it is to see the villain again, even more as she's in her original Bajoran guise, one of only three characters to be seen alternating between Cardassian and Bajoran more than once (the others being Dukat who took on Bajoran disguise, then lost it again before the end, and Kira's turn as a Cardassian, later reverting to her true face).

The real villain is the computer since Tom and Tuvok are trapped in the simulation of Voyager, and I enjoyed the battle between the programming of Seska reacting to the inputs of Janeway as she attempts to help them from the outside. If Seska could turn off communications and Transporters, you'd think she'd be able to blow up the ship or do much more damage than playing around with Tuvok's life, but back then she planned to capture the ship and probably thought killing Tuvok would send a nasty enough message to the Captain without harming her fellow former Maquis. I'd have liked more of the programming battle, like some kind of 'Matrix' training variation (it always comes down to that!), where escape routes and objects are activated or appear, just as Seska changes the rules of the game, but going too far down that route would have needed a much bigger budget as they'd need to be manipulating the ship, having outrageous events like a comet crashing through the bulkhead, to make it work. So they couldn't have escalated things too much, although the pair being pursued by holo-characters with their friends' likenesses could have made it more tense.

I always ask this question in such circumstances: did they really ever escape? Granted, it's unlikely once Seska was defeated that the program would continue, and they wouldn't all be sitting around in the Mess Hall discussing holonovel ideas, but what if it was all part of Seska's plan? Ultimately they'd have been rescued via Starfleet ingenuity, I'm sure, so I take comfort in that, but many times we've seen a situation where people think they've left unreality and eventually, chillingly, realised that they are in fact still in the machine, one of the creepiest things in Trek (doesn't even have to be the Holodeck, with aliens, or journeying into the mind a possibility by this time). The story could have been spread across two parts if they'd wanted to, as being trapped in Seska's nightmare doesn't happen until well into the episode. Perhaps that was designed to make it scary after all the lighthearted banter earlier, to counterpoint the familiar and fun with danger and suspense, but for me it doesn't, partly because it's Tuvok, the most resourceful man on the ship, and Tom, who always keeps the mood light.

The moment that was both most horrifying and funniest was just after the encounter with a Season 1 version of the Doctor - he's matter-of-factly programmed to cause pain, injecting acid into Paris' phaser burn, and grabbing Tuvok by the throat, then proceeds to nonchalantly throw them both out of sickbay as if his work is done. Tuvok says the crew must have been programmed to torture them and Tom suggests they go to the Mess Hall so Neelix can burn them with a pan! It threw up nightmarish visions of encounters with each of their friends and colleagues using their own unique twist to attack them (like Kes using her mental powers to bring the walls of the room in to crush them, or something like that). It was a horrible thought, but Paris' response just made me laugh! It was fun to see the ship and crew recreated from the first season, and anyone who saw the episode for the first time was given plenty of clues that things were not as they seemed, whether that was Chakotay referring to Torres as Ensign, the voice of dead Seska ally Jonas on the comm channel, Tuvok mentioning that Chakotay was still settling into his role as First Officer, and even Kes back to her old self with visible ears, a neater haircut and more suitable clothing - it reinforced how much I miss the old Kes.

The current Kes wasn't seen at all, but her former partner, Neelix, did at least get some of the fun as one of those that had enjoyed the new 'holonovel.' So close before Jennifer Lien would leave it's a shame she wasn't more a part of stories, but then that's likely one of the reasons for parting with the series. But for everyone else this felt, for the most part, like a joyful group outing before the serious end to the season. We get to see variations on the characters as seen through Tuvok and Seska's eyes (as the authors), with little things like Kim not even getting to make his dramatic leap over a console before he's shot, or the real Paris speeding things up to get to the good bit (notice he looks like he's almost standing in the forcefield when he leaves the holding cell), and all concluding with a group laughter session, though not in a cheesy way like 'TOS.' No one seems to mind that their likenesses have been duplicated in a program that was used for entertainment by the crew - you'd think there would be privacy laws about this sort of thing, but perhaps Janeway's directive for ship's culture overrode anyone's discomfort!

Often, it seems to me, the penultimate episode of a modern Trek season is a bit forgettable as money is saved for the big finale and fatigue has set in - I'm not saying 'Resolutions,' in the same slot of the previous season, isn't good, but it's a much lower-key story compared with the big, bold 'Basics.' I also think of 'Transfigurations' just before 'The Best of Both Worlds' as an example. In this episode's case we had what was essentially a bottle show, which would have saved money, I'm sure, but also makes for a good story, something you could only really have done in the Holodeck (even if people getting trapped in there with the safeties off wasn't the most original idea), going to the bother of bringing back an established figure, and reminiscing a little about the early days of the series, and showing how much more comfortable they all are with each other, and how far they've come. Taking stock of the series before readying itself for the gripping conclusion to the season when that family bond would be tested by their deadliest foe yet…

****

Elf

Amiga 1200, Elf (1991), game

A cross between a traditional side-scrolling shoot-'em-up, 'Super Mario' clone and elements of roleplaying games' swapping items to progress, this must have been quite the 'biz' back in 1991 when it was released by Ocean. It looks beautiful, pixel graphics have their own great artistic merit and neatness that realism can't equal, and this was made at the height of pixellated visuals a few years before 3D graphics would become the norm. I originally played this in the late 90s on my Amiga until I got stuck on the fifth level and never could get up the endurance to keep plugging away at it until I solved the puzzle (there were no walkthroughs available at the touch of a mouse button to permeate the gloom - not that I needed internet guidance this time as it wasn't that difficult, even if my eventual breakthrough did come about by complete chance which never makes a game seem fair). 'Elf' was another of those games tucked away in the back of my mind that I planned to revisit with the CD32 controller I'd discovered back in about 2010 which had made playing 'The Speris Legacy' such a joy. This game demanded to be broken, and it was.

The difficulty curve is uneven, there are technical limitations of the time it was made, and it has some strange ways of doing things. For example, rather than keeping a saved file on a blank disc or storing on a Hard Drive (they were rare or nonexistent at that time), you save it directly to the Amiga's memory, between the F1-F8 keys. This is handy if you come to play the game years later (though I would have kept the save disk with the game disks anyway), but it's frustrating if you want to play more than one game since the levels can only be saved one per F-key. If more than one person wanted to play, someone would have to have one of the levels overwritten, and I can just imagine how easy it would be to press the wrong key and save progress over a level you planned to have another go at, perhaps to complete with more points or lives. It was fortuitous for me that I got stuck when I did - exactly the same place I'd left the game fifteen-odd years before: level five, the dwarf caves. If I had overwritten that particular level I'd have had to restart the game almost from the start as on this run-through I hadn't picked up something vital to progress.

Allowing players to make game-changing mistakes is a sign of the illogical flaws that show up from time to time, and is a terrible thing to comprehend in these enlightened times when games are generally so much easier and game design doesn't, or shouldn't, allow for a player to be forced to restart almost from the beginning because they did something that wasn't exactly in line with the creator's plan. What I'm dancing around is my own mistake to ensure I had retrieved the silver flute from the Pie-Eyed Piper back in the second level. In fairness, the guy who told me I needed to give the flute to the Piper also mentioned I should get it back afterwards, and on playing the level through a few times I generally did pick up the item because I accidentally shot the Piper after he'd done his job of getting rid of the rats in the underground tunnel, but I wanted to see what happened if I didn't shoot the Piper (plus I was replaying to get as many lives as possible to make the next level easier). Nothing happened when I didn't shoot the Piper, except of course I didn't get the flute back, which I didn't realise at the time. Unfortunately for me that was the time I was satisfied with the number of lives I'd earned and so progressed to the next level. Only when I got to the caves and needed a bit of metal did I realise I needed the flute, and only then because I played through my old file to see if I'd had anything there that I didn't have this time! So as I said, it was fortunate for me that I had the old save file to rescue me or I'd have had to start again from the second level.

That wasn't the only example of the player having to do exactly what they're told and being allowed to fall into a situation where it was impossible to progress: again with the Piper, if you dropped down into his area without first finding the dynamite, you were stuck there with no way out and had to restart the level, and if you unlocked his cage before first giving him the flute, he disappears and you can't get past the rats! It doesn't exactly encourage exploration… But this was made in a different time when difficult games were normal, and instant death a common occurrence (I think of the 'Rick Dangerous' games with deadly traps at every turn as a prime example). In that regard this was leaps and bounds ahead of many other platform games just because you didn't need to complete it in one sitting, but could save at the end of a level, giving you the option to revisit an earlier one, as I did, in order to get yourself into better shape lives-wise if a level was too tough. One thing about the game, despite it being better to play than some (for example, the massive 'Robocod' that had to be completed in one go, from the start, every time), was that, to begin with at least, there weren't sudden death moments that ate up lives. The first level takes you by the hand and is a good introduction to the mechanics of the game (even though you're still thrown right into the action thanks to the number of enemies that fly, scuttle or leap across the screen). You can fall to your death from the higher platforms, but it's your fault, and teaches you the value of buying the wolf outfit which enables falls from any height without damage.

It also introduces you to the puzzles that make this more than just a platform game with pretensions to shoot-em-up: finding items to swap with in-game characters. There's an art to the conversations you have with these people that can be used to your advantage (though not in the way 'Supercars 2' allowed you to play off the car salesman to get better deals if you said the right thing). That is, the instruction booklet started you off with the two most essential words to say: 'Help' and 'Want,' meaning the characters would tell you how they could help you and what they wanted before they would. If you picked out key words from their responses you could find other clues, which gave the game a little added depth as you unravelled a bit more narrative about them or the game, though for the most part you could get by with the two main words. An example of when digging was necessary was in the penultimate land, the snowy mountain, in which you had to use an elvish page of runes to attack a wizard in order to get the next item, but it was more natural to give it to him which meant, like the Pie-Eyed Piper situation before it, you were stuck with no way to progress from the level. But if you'd talked to him a bit you'd have learnt that he had something you needed and might have more easily worked out that you would have to attack him.

If the 'Talk' option was useful, yet relatively simple, not all of them were. I don't remember ever having to 'Bribe' someone, and there were few times when you had to 'Attack ' or 'Activate' something. I wonder if they originally had bigger plans which never came to full fruition? Something that was used well, for the most part, were the upgrades you could buy at the shop in exchange for the plants and animals you picked up on your travels: there were things to make life easier, such as a short-lived forcefield (though again, you would assume that such an item would have meant you were invulnerable to all creatures, so when you still die on contact with the flying gargoyle-type things in a section of the dwarf caves it feels unfair until you realise you need a specific item to progress - the flute, which is turned into a silver crucifix), a dwarven mail-shirt (inspired by 'The Lord of The Rings,' I wonder?), though that could only be bought in the caves, life-restoring bottles, an amusing, though completely useless hint option, invaluable extra lives, and most usefully, a flying machine. I had mixed feelings about that last one. It made the levels it appeared in so much easier, and they must have realised that they'd given you too much freedom as for most of the levels it's taken away from you with no explanation. It certainly would have made the tough lake and swamp levels a breeze, but those levels in which you did get to fly were more interesting and had more scope anyway.

The flying machine may have been a mistake in game terms, making things too easy, but it was great fun zipping around the screen and added to the fun of the game, especially on the first level when you'd gone around on foot the whole time, climbing ladders and jumping enemies, that it was a real relief. The wolf, while useful, wasn't essential, and nor was the other special option of your character, Cornelius, becoming immune to projectiles by wearing shades… Not sure why shades, but it could be useful for levels where you weren't likely to fall to your death and thus lose the power you'd spent hard-earned resources to get. There was a balance to be had between risking loss of energy or even life in order to build up your supplies of plants and cute animals which made for a slightly more tactical game (just as deciding which of the three powers Cornelius should have, as you could only hold one at a time), though for the most part it was better not to risk lives if you could help it. The game was also tactical in that you only had five slots to carry items in, which meant you were sometimes forced to use up a health-giving bottle to make room for something else.

You did have the option to drop items by cycling through them when standing over another item, which could be useful, but most of the time the bottles were the things taking up space and you could get by without them - there were times when I was low on health that I would find a 'safe' screen (one that didn't have too many platforms for enemies to drop down from, and no drops off the bottom), and keep shooting enemies until I'd picked up sufficient life-replenishing hearts - enemies would mostly drop gems or point-giving items, but after a while they'd leave a heart, so you were never short of opportunities to recover your energy, though it could be risky if you were very low, as enemies could come from anywhere, left or right, high or low. You soon realised that upgrading your weapon was the key to survival, because once you had triple shots firing diagonally up, diagonally down, and across, you were sure to hit everything. The option to use throwing bombs, even though they were more powerful than shots, was really only useful against the end of level bosses, and they were mostly easy to defeat on your first encounter anyway.

An attempt was made to throw you out of your comfort zone in the same manner as the flying machine removal, when you start the snowy mountain area and find the cold has made your weapon unreliable and intermittent. But having studied the available products to buy in the shop from the first level, you knew that at some point you'd need anti-freeze, so there was no concern about what you had to do. It might have been better to include area-specific items only in shops of those areas, but seeing the anti-freeze that you couldn't buy from the first level gave you a sense of anticipation of future locations, so it worked in that sense. They did go to the trouble of making the shop doorways fit the style of the level, too, with my favourite being the Hobbit-like circular doors in the caves. One thing that did leave me wondering was that there were some locked doors in certain levels that I could never pass (the caves and the castle, I think, although the ones you couldn't enter in the castle were just part of the background design).

The difficulty curve was more of a heart monitor, jumping up and down without a great deal of consistency. It stands to reason that the first level is the easiest, and the second about the same (made tougher by removal of the flight option), but then the lake and swamp introduced instant falls to your death at the bottom of pretty much every screen! For me, and this was borne out in the fact that I got stuck there both originally, and on this play-through, the dwarf caves were the hardest level in the game. It wasn't so much unfair to continue the death drops of the lake and swamp, and mix it with the item-carrying of the first two levels, as that makes sense, or to make it more difficult as a whole. What was unfair was making progress by chance (my original failure to progress due to not standing in front of the STOP sign next to the green monster after having fed him the bone), and the fact that the visuals could make it hard to see exactly what was solid ground you could stand on, and what wasn't (a problem much more evident in the final, two-part castle level). The backgrounds were kind of brown, as were the platforms, and while it wasn't such a problem as the castle, it was an issue. The visuals in general were well-designed, with graphical tricks such as reflections at the bottom of the screen in the lake and swamp levels, a pleasing colour palette for the most part, and simple, but attractive animation. There were the usual tropes of ice world, jungle, castle, etc, so they weren't exactly pushing the boat out in plot terms, but they were all nicely done.

The plot was the same as 'Super Mario' - Cornelius must rescue girlfriend Elisa from the clutches of the evil Necrilous, but the game had a sense of humour so it's a bit self-mocking. One part of the humour I didn't like, however, was the dark streak running through it, most notable in the ill-judged execution scene that would play if you lost all your lives, Cornelius in silhouette on top of a hill, the guillotine dropping and his head bouncing messily down the hill to the sound of maniacal laughter in bad taste and not what you'd expect in a family friendly game! It is shown in silhouette, and there is the option to turn it off from the main screen, and it's also worth noting that games weren't as scrutinised at that time - I don't think age ratings had even come in then. True to the black humour is the ending if you successfully destroy all the winching mechanisms holding Elisa suspended over a vat of bubbling green evil. You save her, only to be told you shot one too many cuddly creatures and she's become an ugly, drooling woman who chases you across the screen! At first I wondered if it was possible to complete the game and not shoot too many of the innocent creatures that roam the levels providing accidental cannon fodder, (especially as there's more than one ending to see - if you fail to shoot all the mechanisms, easy to do as there's no tone or notification to tell you, you see a heartbroken Cornelius and the message that though you beat Necrilous, she died, an angelic version rising up the screen), but then I thought it more likely the makers' sense of humour. I wonder if anyone went back through, carefully avoiding cuddly destruction thinking there would be a different result?

As a game to play today I found it quite fun, even though I didn't have strong feelings of nostalgia, and again, I think that can be put down to the comparatively excellent CD32 controller - before that, you had to deal with huge joysticks which could give you blisters from extended play, and buttons that could lose their responsiveness (I could probably do a whole review on the qualities of the various joysticks I used in those days, The Bug probably being the best). That's one thing that changed for the better with much more ergonomic modes of control as the years rolled by and technology improved. It's hard to imagine some of the technical limitations of the past without experiencing them, foremost for me being this game's inability to play both music and sound effects at the same time (though even as late as the N64 that was a problem - on 'Mario Kart 64' you lost the music in multiplayer!), making you choose between them on the main screen. I liked most of the music, though repetitive after a while, it shows how catchy it was that the lake and swamp theme had stayed in my head all those years. There was a bit of laziness with certain levels featuring the same as others if they were thematically linked (lake and swamp, or the castle levels), and the finale just had the title theme again, but I imagine time and budget played their part in that, and in game-playing terms it was best to choose the SFX to get more feedback from shooting or picking up items (which you sometimes might not have seen, so the aural notification was useful).

The game isn't short of secrets, with walls to be broken and high platforms in the flying machine levels, but the best hidden were the bonus areas that could only be found if you stepped in a particular place, such as on a particular cloud - for some reason they were in black and white, which made a cool visual change, although I can't explain why the exit of these was clearly the TARDIS from 'Dr. Who'! Attention to detail was nice, the various environments were done well, and I enjoyed the game much more than if it had been a straight shoot-em-up, but ultimately it was a little constricting in what you had to do and how, and there was frustration when the third and fourth levels turn into a left to right jump-and-instant-death-drop-athon with only a modicum of the collecting and exchanging of items presented in the first two levels. The variety should have been welcome, but I'd have preferred a more consistent set of levels like the first two and the mountain, and a more gradual level of difficulty. I can't say the game was too difficult, so overall it was pitched right, and as I mentioned before, compared with other games in the genre of this time on the Amiga it was probably one of the best. Difficult enough to slow you down, but not to put you off playing forever, even if it takes fifteen years to come back to it!

***

Displaced

DVD, Voyager S3 (Displaced)

A good little story, dis-placed third from de end of de season, it's quite happy to be a small-scale (though far from intimate), tale that is very much an ensemble piece for the cast. It just seems content in its own skin without trying to be a wham-bam, action-packed spectacle, or a stage play bottle show, and I like it for what it is. Like the previous episode it's nothing major, just an enjoyable enough sci-fi examination of a subject, this time I would say the message isn't as clear, but it's probably something to do with war (the Nyrians have a unique approach to conquest through infiltration), and trust. Actually, when you start to think about the message it sort of infiltrates you - it may not seem to have a strong opinion on anything, but I think it's pointing out how subtlety can overwhelm a ship, or the mindset of an individual or society by introducing alien concepts in their midst. At first this may not threaten their values or way of life, but eventually comes a tipping point and things have changed and can't go back to the way they were: the insidious takeover has happened through the use of a seemingly benign build-up. This can be seen in attitudes projected through TV itself as a motivator of change on society and not necessarily of change for the better. So it could be TV commenting on itself in a subtle way about the subtlety of suggestion! Either that or my mind fell down a paradox…

Getting back to the actual episode, removing it from its potential warning about the 'frog in a pan' effect (a frog changes its temperature and will continue to do so as the heat under the pan is turned up, until it's eventually boiled alive), it is one I quite enjoy for its simplicity in storytelling and for using the cast well, even if they do look foolish for not taking strong enough precautions against the possibility that this apparently peaceful and disoriented group of aliens are actually an invasion force. Fair enough, the first few 'refugees' that appear you would treat with the benefit of the doubt, but as soon as you see a pattern and that this number is continuing to grow you'd think they would have done more to contain a potential threat than put them in a cargo bay. Chakotay doesn't seem to get it until very late, and he's usually the one to present an alternate way of looking at things to his Captain - Tuvok, too, should have been more on the ball, but I think he was one of the early abductees so his valuable insight was missed. Chakotay waits until he's down to an absolute minimal crew, and only when he discovers the empty cargo bay does he tell them to beware as the Nyrians 'might' be trying to take over, which does make him look a little slow. Then again, he's always been known as a peaceful man willing to put trust in strangers to encourage their trust in him, so it's true to his character that he wouldn't be interrogating the aliens and blaming them.

As we saw in 'Distant Origin' he takes great care to show himself as unthreatening and approachable, but sometimes that attitude puts him in a difficult position. That's when he becomes Action Chak' - just like that previous episode, it's up to him to solve the problem. There are other aspects of the story that mirror the episode, though: a saurian alien in Jarleth, the Ferengi/Neelix alien type, and once again Voyager taken over by a superior force. That's twice in two episodes, you'd think they'd start to get a complex about it! Not that it's been an uncommon occurrence as we had the Vidiians taking over in Season 2's 'Deadlock,' the Kazon in 'Basics,' and the Voth swallowing the ship in its entirety. Somehow they always manage to recapture Voyager by the end of the story, funny that. There wouldn't be much of a series without the title character, I suppose, but it would have been interesting if they'd had to live out lives away from their mobile home for a few episodes. Perhaps combine the later story, 'Workforce,' with a similar event to 'Basics' and that could have made for a great multi-episode arc. Even 'DS9' did that, losing control of the station for six episodes. But this was the time when 'Voyager' had started to pull back from internal continuity, not completely, but they weren't going to be doing ongoing plots like the Maquis spy or the Neelix jealousy over Kes, which was a shame, but at the same time they were about to enter their best couple of seasons.

Ever since Neelix and Kes broke up they had less purpose on the series, and I felt that again in this episode. Even though both have lines they don't feel important to the story and could have just as well not been there. The Doctor proves to be a life saver thanks to being a useful tool (he becomes Geordi La Forge's VISOR!), Tom and B'Elanna's friendship is fully apparent, and the others tend to be highly trained Starfleet officers or action heroes, leaving the alien characters in the dust, sadly. I wonder whether Jennifer Lien or the writers knew at this point that Kes wouldn't be staying with the series? More effort is definitely seen being put into the Torres/Paris deal, with their building friendship taking on the characteristics it would run with as the series progressed, such as Tom encouraging the Klingon heritage of B'Elanna, and she getting frustrated with it, and him. It's a real shame we didn't get to see the Klingon fighting holoprogram, though it was good to see the result of BYOB from the previous episode - it would have been an ideal way to put in a callback to 'TNG' with its multi-levelled jungle set and skull warriors, and 'DS9' with the courting Dax and Worf, but I suppose the budget and story time had to be spent on the Nyrian invasion and habitats of their 'prison ship' - learning they were on a ship didn't have the same impact as the earlier Season 3 story, 'The Chute,' and we didn't even get to see it from the outside, instead relying on an on screen diagram. Probably another budgetary constraint, and one that may well be rectified when the series gets its Blu-Ray rebirth.

The Nyrians never pulled off being the major threat of the episode, more like a cross between Alixus of the 'DS9' episode 'Paradise' ('enjoy your new home, and gets used to it' attitude to captivity), and some kind of religious order in dress code, not having the horror that was needed, even when unmasked. Sometimes it can be more terrible when a race or character previously thought benign, kindly and bewildered, become malign and reveal nasty cunning, because you've accepted them and allowed them into your comfort zone, but although it was still something of a shock when violence ensues there was never malevolence. It also gets you wondering: if they're so advanced with this translocator that can beam great distances (maybe that's what Old Spock gave to Young Scotty in 'Star Trek XI'?), and they're warlike, wanting to capture alien ships, there seems to be some discrepancy.

Is it laziness that they don't like building their own, because they clearly don't need other species' ships if they can build a massive travelling prison rigged up to hold who knows how many races in habitats suitable for them? If they went to all that trouble, why bother stealing ships in the first place? There isn't the feeling of dismay such as you get in 'Dragon's Teeth' about unleashing a terrible force on the quadrant, or the growing tension of something bad in the bowels of the ship, as 'Star Trek: First Contact' did so well with the Borg. They're simply an irritating race that obstinately refuse to play war by the rules. If we'd learned that they were xenophobic like the Founders or Romulans we could start to appreciate their motive, but because we don't get a chance to see their culture because of the format of always moving on to the next story, there's not enough time for a revulsion to creep in, so they remain simply bad guys. Sometimes this works brilliantly where a lack of information about a race in the shadows stimulates the imagination and encourages fear, but with these people, everything was simple and the only horror was in seeing the ship taken over so easily (but there's also something amusing about seeing people vanish in front of their colleagues, such as the goldshirt who taps his badge, but is speechless for what to say - likely a money-saving trick because they didn't want to have to pay an extra, extra!).

A way this could have been improved is as a 'Lower Decks' for this series. In the 'TNG' episode it was all about lower-ranked characters going about their business under the heroes we know. Here we could have had an action-packed version of that - the seeds are in place with several minor characters being forced to operate the ship after the majority of the crew have disappeared, and it is really enjoyable to see an Ensign left in charge of the bridge due to necessity, a chance to see how Starfleet's underlings show their mettle. But in the fight against the invaders it's all too little, too late, and they're shown as being particularly ineffective against a none too aggressive force. What should have happened was a war on two fronts - while Janeway and the others devised an exit out of the habitat, Chakotay, or once he was gone, one of the Ensigns, should have led the insurgency (again, 'DS9' did that well in 'The Siege'), but with a group of minor characters shown to be using all their training to survive while plans went awry because people kept being translocated. It could have made a more tense B-story, especially as we'd have got to know these few and wouldn't be sure of their survival. But the series tended away from recurring characters after the first two seasons, with those that were established (Vorik, Samantha Wildman, Jo Carey), appearing rarely. With Voyager more a community than any other starship before it, it would have been ideal for developing a village feel, but instead they wanted to set themselves apart from 'DS9,' the result just another example of failing to meet potential.

There are other things about the Nyrians that you question: if they can choose who to translocate (as scientist Rislan demonstrates when he moves Torres to the top of the queue), why didn't they take out all the senior staff to begin with? Because it would have looked much more suspicious if the Captain had been first to vanish, whereas sadly, Kes, at this stage of the series wasn't missed for quite a while! But once they were in control why not take out the leaders and top-ranked? And why couldn't they just beam the whole crew off at once if they had such advanced tech? Actually that one was answered in the episode, suggesting that the translocator took longer for greater distances, which was why they had to do it one at a time. I'd get that glitch fixed, though, if they really want to be invaders - another fact that makes me wonder if the Nyrians are warlike because they're lazy and don't want to live off their own hard work!

The Nyrians aren't the only ones to question in this story, however. Take, Jarleth, their friendly neighbourhood saurian who just stops by to let them know they're welcome. He's easy to please, he just wants to make friends and barter for food. Yes, that's the food that the crew get free from the Replicators in their habitat. I understand that these machines are programmed to replicate food of the race that exists in the habitat, and Jarleth likes to taste something different (though it didn't look much like human food to me!), but he's shown to be pretty handy with technology - he did find out how to travel between habitats via the invisible portals, after all. And he can't reprogram his own Replicator so he can make whatever food he wants? Let's just cover it over by saying he likes wandering into other races' homes/gilded cages, but even accepting that, he's happy to reveal his portal-hopping secret for a couple of baskets of this food? He didn't think introducing this ability to other groups might give the Nyrians cause to clamp down on this blatant disregard for life in their prison? And in the nine years he's been there he's never been able to find other portals to other locations so he could escape? His species seemed easily content, so maybe they're a non-combative race, perhaps even as lazy as the Nyrians themselves!

The Doctor, too, was not thinking straight, as he claims he hadn't been cut off from the ship before, but in 'Future's End,' the story that introduced the mobile emitter he was kidnapped by it and trapped on Earth! I know he lost his memory this season, but that happened before (I think. Or did it? It's catching!). As for the way he's treated by Torres, she was taking a real liberty by removing his ability to speak - it's a humorous moment, yet when you think about it, it's also quite chilling the way he can be treated in this extreme manner. No wonder he later started championing holographic rights: it was all the fault of B'Elanna's hot Klingon temper! Talking of liberties, Janeway shows what she's capable of when she tortures two of the Nyrians by having them beamed into the freezing cold habitat, something which they can't take (Voyager's temperature has to be upped to 45 degrees centigrade in hospitality for their guests, which is very hot indeed, yet no one sweats, and they go about as normal - must be those all-weather Starfleet uniforms, though they didn't do so well in the cold…). I can see why she did it, but it's one of those extreme courses of action that Janeway would take when her crew's safety was at stake. This feels like the start of her path to 'Equinox' in which she was willing to let people die.

Torres and Tom are thrust together by circumstances once again, and in a cave, just like in 'Blood Fever' - she knows she can rely on the guy, though they do have a falling out during the episode which afterwards is shown even in body language when she mirrors Tom's folded arms, he notices and deliberately puts his hands behind his back in response, which I thought was great attention to detail. B'Elanna's temper hasn't been such an issue this season, I would suggest, so to have it become part of the plot again was a good move, and also gave Paris something to bump up against, in case he thought everything was going so well. I wouldn't have thought he would outrank her as he claims, citing his position as a bridge officer. Surely the Chief Engineer is about the fourth most important position on the ship, way ahead of helmsman, no matter how fluently he pilots the ship - without the Engineer that ship isn't going anywhere! In 'TOS' Scotty was third in command, but then that was a century before, and the situation here is different because Torres wasn't even technically Starfleet. But going on that reasoning, Tom was a convicted felon! It should be ranked as Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, then Torres.

At least the Vulcan was on the ball, as usual. The Nyrians were wise to take him early as he would have surely been a voice of caution against the aliens. As it is, he resigns himself to making a phaser that looks more like a lightsaber (we also see what looks like Dagobah for a fleeting moment, as one of the habitats) - I half expected him to spin a line about this being something Chakotay's Father had wanted him to have, the weapon of a Jedi, but it was nice to see the pair have a quiet moment of levity together, even if it would have meant more if the conflict between the two at the start of the series had been followed up on. Doesn't seem to matter whether he has nothing but natural materials (bow and arrows out of sticks in 'Basics,' for example), or technology to engineer, Tuvok can always come up with a weapon in any situation - another reason why his Vulcan is so cool! The different habitats and this hub area brought to mind the structure of computer games, but in this case I got the impression that they weren't holographic. This does bring up further questions of the abilities of the Nyrians to build something like that, but it also makes you wonder how these things fit together as the hub entrances aren't that far from each other, or they didn't seem to be! Obviously we couldn't explore the vast area of a habitat, but they do a good job of the hub and making it feel like a connecting area to different doorways: to the ice world, the desert world, the jungle, etc. I wonder if they did have a race of Yoda's species hidden in there?

For a story about a slow takeover of the ship it actually cuts to the chase pretty quickly and spends time in the habitat. I suppose human's don't have a reputation in this quadrant so the Nyrians had no way of knowing that caging a ship full of them wasn't going to work as they weren't going to sit back and accept the change as Jarleth's race did (they didn't watch 'The Cage' from 'TOS,' obviously), or as I imagine the Nyrians might if faced with it themselves, and they'd have been better advised to not interfere. The ending didn't live up to the great and thoughtful conclusions that have peppered this season, with Paris and Torres making up by sitting together in the Resort holoprogram, but it's good to see characters getting along, and brings to mind the ending of 'The Ascent,' and other, similar stories, though this hadn't earned such a strong reaction because the pair hadn't been through something so intense, it was just a little personal argument in the midst of much bigger things. We get a couple of point-of-views that we don't see in Trek often: when Torres is translocated we see Engineering dissolve around her and turn into the habitat. We also see it from the Doctor's perspective when his vision is calibrated to detect portals. Dammar wasn't the best choice of name as it was too close to Damar on 'DS9,' and this character had none of the complexity of the Cardassian, but at least we now know the reason the Kes and Kim action figures never came out in the UK: those were the first two to be abducted by the Nyrians.

***

Distant Origin

DVD, Voyager S3 (Distant Origin)

Jurassic Voyager! A pretty wacky idea presented in a serious manner, a way you could probably sum Trek up as a whole. Not even 'TOS' dared posit Earth dinosaurs as an advanced species that left home having discovered warp travel and travelled so far away they ended up at the opposite side of the galaxy, the Delta Quadrant. If they really had become intelligent why would they feel the need to go so far when they could have settled in another system? Did they develop enemies out of other spacefaring races? Perhaps they had an offshoot like the Vulcans, that didn't like the Voth way and went off to create their own culture? And maybe they called themselves the Gorn? Okay, there are lots of saurian races out there in Trek-land, but it's fun to postulate a link between the ones we know (for example, could Tosk from the Gamma Quadrant be another kind of Jem'Hadar since they were both engineered for specific roles?), and throwing up questions about the species and life out there is one of those things that makes Trek's universe feel so real. Even so, it is a bit of a stretch to believe in dinosaurs discovering warp speed before Zefram Cochrane! Maybe they should take down his famous statue and put up one of the Voth? Except of course, Earth, Starfleet, and the Federation don't know about this latest discovery thanks to Voyager being out of contact.

That's the thing with this series - they can get away with lore-defining moments without upsetting the status quo back home since no one knows about any of it (until later in the series, anyway). Even then they were spinning stories about B'Elanna's potential child being a Klingon messiah and such, which you'd think would potentially shake up things in the Alpha Quadrant, but we don't get to see that side of things once 'DS9' ended (which makes me wonder if that series would have addressed that particular plot twist had it still been airing at the same time). In the end nothing really changes because the Voth refuse to accept the new evidence, as compelling as it was. But that's the thing about science, it's never complete, there are always new angles, new evidence, disagreements and changing theories so what we have is only as good as what we know at the moment. So maybe the Voth were from Earth, or maybe they weren't, and Gegen might have discovered that actually the genetic markers were wrong or from a very similar planet (think how many Earth-like planets with human-like races there are in Trek!), but the point of the episode, I suppose, is to show that society can be closed-minded to the truth, whether that's scientific or faith-based truth.

Minister Odala was certainly painted in the harshest of terms as a bureaucrat intent on preserving the status quo, not accepting anything that might diminish her own power or that of her race's superior position in their area of the quadrant. There's a moment when Chakotay eloquently sounds forth a strong argument that her people should listen to the new findings, not bury them because it demonstrates their true heritage of struggle and fortitude to advance to such a degree and reach such a distance into the galaxy, that she almost seems to accept it, but instead she closes down the discussion when she sees there's no way to win with words, summarily exercising her control, sitting down as if to underline that there is nothing more to be said and nothing will change. Her people are not being given a choice in what to believe, they are stuck in unknowing ignorance, just like the people in 'The Matrix' waiting for someone to come and uncover their eyes. But it will not be Professor Gegen, who feels he can do nothing but relent and retract his theory to save Voyager's crew.

That was the reason why they came up against such a superior force this time, to make the crew's freedom dependent upon someone else's decision, something we don't see very much as usually Janeway takes things into her own hands, and, relying on her crew, can battle the odds and survive each week. Who knows, but even here they might have escaped if given no other option, and that might well have been a terrific second-part to the story, though it had been done before on the series, in fact at the beginning of this season when the Kazon wrested control of Voyager and stranded the crew, so I suppose it might have been a bit of a rehash. No doubt Gegen would have died helping them escape and it would have played out in the standard way. This episode is certainly different from the norm, not just in the defeat at the end, but in the long opening without any sign of the ship or main cast. Instead we have a sequence of discovery, a reminder of places the ship had been earlier this season as Gegen tracks down this mystery ship, visiting some of those places.

And so we come to the grisliest reappearance of a character on Trek: Hogan, in the form of a skeleton! Not just a skeleton, but one that's had a good bite out of its skull from the Hanon IV eel creature that killed him. It started me wondering if that dinosaur-like monster could be another relation of the Voth, but you can't attribute every saurian creation to one race (unless the aliens from 'The Chase' that 'seeded' the Alpha Quadrant with bipedal species made a trip to the Delta Quadrant, too…), as fun as it is to draw connections. I would have liked them to make it clearer that this is Hanon IV where the crew were stranded by the Kazon, maybe with an onscreen subtitle as they did in some of the Trek films, but if you're in the know it's great to see a few places revisited, such as the space station on the edge of the Nekrit Expanse or what looks like a member of the Tak Tak. With the premise of the series being Voyager always forging on, it was difficult to do throwbacks (even though this is the second in two episodes, though the last one was Kes time-travelling into an old scene so it's not quite the same thing), but they get around that by having the Voth be this not only space-faring race, but space-living, apparently - they chug around in a city ship so they can come to Voyager. I say chug, but they actually travel at transwarp speeds (we know this because the stars look even prettier in transwarp!) - all the better for catching you up with.

I'm not sure why the Voth hadn't become the Delta Quadrant's version of the Dominion since they were so far advanced than other races we've seen (the Kazon would have been easy slaves, and even the Vidiians would have succumbed to such power), and they have the strong will and sense of authority. I suppose it's down to their disgust or disinterest in inferior warmblooded species, whom they see as beneath them, whereas the Founders took over out of a sense of fear and need to control everything. Maybe the Voth are more responsible than the Founders, or maybe they know about other, more dangerous forces in the quadrant, such as the Borg, and choose to keep, if not a low profile, one that is only concerned with their own affairs. I know this was supposed to be a dig at the Catholic Church for their treatment of Galileo, and you could see the city ship as being similar to the Vatican, a closed-off, fully independent state, only in space. I was reminded of both Shinzon's stair room (as I like to call it), in 'Star Trek Nemesis,' and the Emperor's showing-off chamber on the Death Star in 'Return of The Jedi' by Odala's circular hall (it might have been the shape, the large starlit windows and the lighted stairs), though I wished it had been bigger, with the Elders sat around, as it feels like this is a matriarchy rather than whatever it was, with no one else giving voice to the dictates of the state other than her. It certainly doesn't feel like a democracy, with the state in full control and deciding what each citizen would do, rather giving the impression of Russia.

Whatever the politics of the episode there is a strong science versus faith debate. Or is there? It's another scientist, for sure, and another misunderstood and sympathetic scientist, but in actuality, faith never came into the equation. The Voth have beliefs about their place in the universe and don't appreciate that being questioned, but it's all self-serving, rather than truly being about faith and freedom, so I would suggest it's not the age-old science/faith thing at all, but a reasonable depiction of knowledge being repressed to retain power for those at the top. So I see it as more of a political debate than anything else. There's no arguing with the power the Voth leaders have, Voyager completely powerless (though Tom has a good old go), caught inside the belly of the beast with nary a whisper of defence - the inside reminded me of the vast technological space of V'GER, which made me ponder on Voyager being inside V'GER… I would have liked the takeover of the ship to have been a little more dramatic, with firefights in the corridors and people being beamed out of hiding in Jefferies tubes, and I understand that I sound doltish when I say the episode stays more on the side of talk than action, but I think a great episode has a good slice of both ideas and ideas in action, where this became a bit more of a courtroom drama, though not to the extent of other Trek versions.

There are good things visually, with strong direction, particularly in the choice of angles and shots, with some never-before-seen views, my favourite looking down on the bridge from the rear as Janeway enters, tracking her across to Chakotay, presumably to emphasise the fact that aliens are aboard observing the crew, even though this wasn't actually their point of view. The bulging faces and striking eyes of the Voth are also given full due, though I couldn't help thinking, as I always do when aliens with clawed hands are encountered, that the style and function of their technology would be vastly different without nimble fingers to build and operate it. But it's fair enough that on a television budget you can't create from scratch a completely different alien look and technology, quite aside from the time it would take, and I'm happy to go with it (though they did manage something along those lines in 'Unexpected' on 'Enterprise' with the Xyrillians having a very alien environment, though I expect they also used touch screens, and they had 'normal' hands anyway). Something else that comes to mind is that the Voth weren't quite ready for the change in their history, though optimistically Gegen hopes that future generations will take up the baton and one day the race will be ready to learn the truth - it's reminiscent of the Malcorians in 'First Contact' who discover Riker undercover and are forced to believe in aliens and the possibility of warp travel, though in their case the leader at the top chose to keep it secret for his people's own good, rather than to grip on to power.

I always appreciate it when the Holodecks are used for practical purposes rather than just recreation, as Janeway does this time for researching dinosaurs, though I was half-expecting her to walk over that creature's tail in a recreation of the added scene in the first 'Star Wars' film when Han walks round Jabba The Hutt! I'd have loved to have seen Tom and B'Elanna's Bat'leth duel as we used to see Worf and Dax' as their friendship continues to grow - BYOB, though, was long before texting made acronyms extremely irritating and lazy, so I can forgive them for it here. It was fortunate Chakotay was the specimen Gegen steals away when he and assistant Veer are discovered (the series would do invisible visitors - invisitors? - again in 'Scientific Method'), after underestimating the Voyager crew. I can just imagine Tuvok or Harry reacting badly and refusing to cooperate in any way, but Chakotay is quick to reach out the hand of peace to this alien he's never met before, despite having been shot with a tranquillising dart by Veer. On Veer, it was sad to see him turn against his professor, even though the possibilities of how they're making him say what they want under duress are pointed out, because we never truly know why he discredited Gegen, or had a reconciliation by the end, leaving poor Gegen completely alone with only the hope that one day his research will be revived and believed. But this season has been big on meaningful endings, not shying away from negative ones as much as positive.

***