Episode 52: Warlord

 
This one’s teaser starts off with Paris, Kim and Neelix in a gaudy Hawaiian style resort, (but it’s from another planet, go figure) and finishes on a close-up of Neelix’s feet. Thankfully though, things get better from there, well they’d have to, wouldn’t they?

So in this episode Kes is possessed by a Warlord from another planet (See where they got the title from?) and as I’m sure I’ve said before Jennifer Lien can act. She’s just hardly ever given the opportunity to since the vast majority of her scenes involve Neelix who, under the influence of the Warlord, she broke up with!
Since we’ve only ever seen her as Kes it was quite refreshing to see her as this Tieran character (unfortunately not Tyrion from Game of Thrones, I’m not THAT lucky) and take relish in death and sexual deviancy. The sexual deviancy being that Tieran (male) not minding who he went with to get power, of course his wife wasn’t as pleased...

Another good thing about the episode is we spent most of it on the planet with Tieran in Kes’ body and the world down there. The Voyager crew were hardly in this by contrast, with the exception of Tuvok who attempted a rescue. Incidentally Tuvok actor Tim Russ is apparently a big Star Trek fan and would be the one on set keeping things right continuity wise. Well, when they listened, that is.

Episode 51: Future's End Part II

I can pretty much explain what happens in this episode in a sentence.  People get caught, then escape, then caught and escape again (it's almost like old Doctor Who) before the time line reverts to normal (and back to Voyager).  It seemed like a series of short episodes all stuck together rather than the conclusion to anything.

The best thing about the entire episode of course was the Doctor.  Now that he can actually leave the sickbay into the real world now that can only make things better.  There was a nice moment when he’s outside and he stops to smell a tree. Plus of course his usual sardonic wit.
 

At one point, Torres and Chakotay (who were on their way to rescue Paris) are captured by an anti-government militia in Arizona, presumably just to appear topical for a 24th century show.  I’m assuming the scene where they play Mortal Kombat against the cast of Friends was cancelled.
 

Okay, I promise I won’t mention the fact that the eugenics war should be happening, who says I khan’t.... dammit.  Still I don’t understand Jeri Taylor’s logic that “those of us who entered into the Nineties realize the Eugenics Wars simply aren't happening.”  Well that’s because we’re not in Star Trek.... it’s a TV show.  They could have have easily had one line saying that the time travel paradox stuff altered the war so it happened later.  Not that I’m mentioning it of course.

Episode 50: Future's End Part I

It’s a Thursday so we must be due for another time travel episode, and we are.
 

So a bunch of time travel type paradox stuff happens and Voyager ends up on Earth in 1996 where they have to find a pair of humpbacked whales... no wait, that was the better one.  This crew have to prevent a paradox and Ed Begley Jr using his smarm to destroy the Solar System.  There’s also a homeless man in LA  in 1996 who was from the 29th century and was a Star Fleet Captain of a Timeship until Voyager happened.  I know how he feels.  Oh yes, and Sarah Silverman is also there to help Voyager.  Was this sweeps week or something?
 

Of course this couldn’t be a Voyager episode without cliche, and there’s nothing that springs forth cliches better than computers in TV/movies.  I loved how Janeway didn’t really know how to use the 1996 computer but within seconds was typing, changing screens, and all without using a mouse.  Did ‘The Net’ teach them nothing?

Not a bad episode but it did suffer a bit too much in the ‘fish out of water’ syndrome with saying how different things are every five seconds, like Neelix and Kes watching soap operas or Paris calling things ‘groovy’..  Plus it was done with more aplomb in Star Trek IV.  Though to give credit where it’s due, there was a funny bit when Janeway’s communicator went off on Earth, the contemporary humans in the background all checked their phones.  Still there’s the hope of more than one scene with the Doctor in Part II.

Episode 49: Sacred Ground

So Voyager's taking a tour of a random planet's spirtual complex, it's not like they have anything better to do.  What?  Travel to the Alpha Quadrant?  Trust me Star Fleet's better off without them.  Anyway, Kes is injured and to cut a long story short (it doesn't) Janeway has to seek an audience with the spirits, and to do that she has to forget about science and give in to blind faith.  Well, it's not as if science has done anything for us.  Well apart from rocket travel, improved life expectancy and well everything, what has science ever done for us?
 

Of course during this we have Neelix wallowing in his own self pity and being as annoying a character as he normally is.  I swear there were a couple of episodes in which he was good in, more if you count the ones he wasn’t in.  Yet, they ignore them and continue writing him in the same way with no change to his character at all.

 
Meanwhile whilst all this is going on before you can say "written out of character" Chakotay is actually trying to talk Janeway out of this.  Is he jealous now somebody else has their own spirtual shtick?
Isn’t it time for another silly episode?  I’m getting a bit bored of these...um... boring ones.

Episode 48: Remember

You just know you’re in for an extra special episode when the cliffhanger before the credits is that Torres sleeps in.  Strap yourselves in, it’s warp factor entertainment!  Point two.
 

So Voyager’s acting like a taxi service for a group of aliens travelling to their home planet.  These aliens have telepathic links and shortly afterwards Torres has dreams, in which she is one of the aliens, in the form of After School Specials.  This particular one is that the Holocaust is bad.  Yeagh, I think most people know that.  So Torres is getting these dreams from one of the elder aliens who dies. Torres gets annoyed at this, tries to confront the aliens but none of them will believe her about the holocaust and because this is the week that Janeway stands by the Prime Directive she can’t do anything about it.  Until that is one of the aliens decides to see the image in her mind and see it’s all true.  
 

Just one question, so why didn’t the elder alien just cut out the middle man and send the dreams to one of her race in the first place?  Then I wouldn’t have had to put up with this pointless episode in which the Voyager crew don’t actually do anything.

Oh and lastly, when the writers decide to have Janeway say the line “When was the last time I surprised you?” to Tuvok how about they not make it two episodes after he said to her “Captain, you have managed to surprise me”.

Episode 47: False Profits

Or this episode should be called “Alpha Quadrant, how can we miss you if you won’t go away?”.  So Voyager while travelling 70,000 light years from Earth comes across the two Ferengi last seen in a TNG episode.  Plus there’s the chance of them all getting back home (Spoiler: they don’t).
 

So instead of just beaming the Ferengi aboard (which they do and then put them back) because it might affect the planet, they then set about an elaborate scheme to have them leave and have the population happy.  Does no-one else think they should just beam them aboard and warp the hell out of there?  It’s not the like the planet could be any more screwed now is it?
 

Considering this is a Ferengi comedy story it’s a quite dark in places.  It veers from the vaudeville of Neelix pretending to be the Grand Nagus’ Proxy and how are the two Ferengi going to get out of that? Oh wait, they’ll kill him.  Plus the population of the planet get quite violent towards the end, but who can blame them really.
 

While I’ll give you this is a silly episode, I actually quite like it, it kept me mildly amused.  Don’t worry I’m sure next episode Janeway’ll be back to being a ‘by the book’ Captain.  When it suits of course.

Episode 46: The Swarm

So we’re back to an A and a B story.  Typically enough the A story is mundane and the B story is quite good.  Also typically enough the good B story features the Doctor.
 
So the crew come across a new alien species who own a vast expanse of space and aren’t keen on visitors.  Going around it would add time to Voyager’s already lengthy journey so they opt to go through it and take the risks.  Anyway since when did they care about the amount of time it would take when they go gallavanting off to the nearest anomaly on a whim and go on random journeys to find crewmember’s offspring?  Not ten seconds after this announcement it’s stated that Star Fleet forbids ships to go into other alien territories without consent and Janeway’s find disobeying this.  She really just makes it all up as she goes along doesn’t she?
 
Meanwhile the Doctor is losing his memory and so Torres uses the diagnostic programme and a holographic recreation of his creator Dr Zimmerman to help.  If there’s anything that can help a Voyager episode it’s two Doctors, in fact I’d like it if he just played every character in the show but then I’m not subtle about that.  As already said this was the best part and not just the Doctor being funny but him showing fear at the coming unknown of memory loss but this should have been it’s own episode rather than playing second fiddle to the bee aliens.
 
This episode’s triumph  though was it’s ending was used by Star Trek Nemesis.  Now that’s infamy for you.