Episode 140: The Good Shepherd

Yes, it’s Lower Deck’s Voyager style but it’s not the worst episode in the world. That was last week.

It’s the 24th century so of course at the start of the episode we have people walking from deck to deck to deliver electronic messages to one another. Seven has unsurprisingly decided that the ship isn’t efficient enough but instead of closing the holodeck she’s more concerned with the crew. There are three people who’s talents are being wasted. These are Harren, an irritating genius who is assigned a routine task to keep him out of the way, Telfer a hypochondriac, and Celes who is always making errors. Okay, what’s Celes “talent” precisely? Janeway is annoyed that three of her crew have “slipped through the cracks”. Only three? The serial killer was fine was he? She decides to take them all on an away mission on the Delta Flyer to examine a class-T cluster (spatial anomalies to you and me). Out in the cluster the three crew and Janeway find evidence of dark matter lifeforms, 400 years in the future you’d think they’d have found out what dark matter is but then they’ve forgotten emails so who knows. The lifeforms transport Telfer away before returning him without his hypochondria. Then after Harren kills one of them in defence, the creatures all advance on the Flyer and Janeway orders the rest to the escape pods. They disobey and stay with her apart from Harren, who uses the escape pod as a distraction so the Flyer can escape. He’s then beamed aboard and they all make it back to Voyager having learned a lesson and felt better about themselves. Apparently.