When the Doctor’s hard drive starts to fill up with opera, romantic relationships and all the complex glories of being human, he finds himself increasingly unable to fulfil his function as Voyager’s Chief Medical Officer — instead becoming a heartbreaking analogue of your dad suffering from dementia. Also, a bunch of space things happen that we couldn’t possibly care about.
In this week’s meeting of the Jeri Ryan Appreciation Society, we watch the most aggressively average Star Trek episode the Randomiser can find, only to discover that there’s still a lot of fun to be had — hilariously sluggish action scenes, a shockingly low-effort Intransigent Alien Race, and some wonderfully subtle and nuanced performances from Ethan Phillips, Tim Russ and Jeri Ryan.
It’s business as usual on Star Trek this week, as the crew of Voyager find themselves in an episode of Secret Army which has been cast, written and directed by latex-headed aliens in Nazi uniforms. Will Voyager’s extensive back catalogue of holodeck programs persuade the Hirogen that there’s more to life than festooning your bulkheads with human skulls? Or will the Captain be forced (reluctantly) to kill Seven of Nine first?
This week: a clever script, a complete absence of banter, a frog alien that scores zero on the B’omar Scale, astonishingly good incidental music by Mahler and Tchaikovsky, and two outstanding performances from Mark Harelik and Kate Mulgrew — all working together perfectly to create one of Voyager’s Best Episodes Ever. Enjoy. (You will.)
It’s our first trip to the Delta Quadrant, and we have questions that need answering. Is B’Elanna’s father a massive racist or just a regular-sized racist? Which is more convincing: Tom and B’Elanna’s baby or an 8472 in a well-lit room? And can we maintain focus all the way through a 45-minute episode of Voyager without a single space anomaly?
