Episode 5: Phage

Thankfully it’s not another time episode, but give it...uh... time.

The character focus of this episode seems to be the relationship between Neelix and Kes which I just don’t believe in.  True, Kes isn’t the most interesting character unfortunately but at least they’re trying to do things with her.  But Neelix isn’t one of them, sure we’re told they’re going out but aside from that they don’t seem to have any chemistry.  Kes has more chemistry with the Doctor, but then it is the Doctor.    Speaking of the Doctor it’s good to see more of him in this and more of his personality to take a more prominent role.

The Vidiians in this episode are a good original concept and they’re more than just evil for evil’s sake (unlike the Kazons).  Another idea I like is having the replicators rationed and using a kitchen with a chef. 

Anyway, so Janeway in this episode lets the aliens go towards the end because otherwise would be “wrong”.  Uh, what?  She has a crew member without lungs in sickbay (admittedly Neelix) and she doesn’t want to take the lungs back from the Vidiian?  And it turns out Neelix only needs one of the lungs anyway so they could’ve both theoretically survived since the Vidiians have superior medical knowledge.

Also if you’ve seen the Futurama Star Trek episode where they mock Trek’s overuse of metaphors to make things simple for the audience, I think they may have watched Voyager.  There’s about three of things in this episode alone.  Alas “balloon and something bad happens” wasn’t in there.