Star Trek: Voyager

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.

Flushed with the success of its previous attempt at Gothic Horror, Star Trek gamely tackles the genre again, as the Doctor’s experiments with the parameters of his program inevitably lead to a high-concept holographic version of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with all of the creepiness towards women that that implies. Aggressively mediocre.

Two of Voyager’s more likeable characters succumb to a Large Braga Asshole Field in an episode beset by rudimentary effects and sluggish action sequences, while Joe and Nathan imagine what might have been.

This week, Joe and Nathan find themselves travelling backwards in time to 1997, when they first watched and enjoyed the Star Trek: Voyager episode Before and After, only to find themselves infected with a deadly [tech], which will be going to have activated some time later (or earlier) when they undergo [tech] therapy in the Doctor’s new [tech] treatment [tech]. Meanwhile, Harry has apparently married a toddler or something, which seems upsetting and highly inappropriate.

As Voyager approaches the end of its third year, it’s time for its very own version of The Best of Both Worlds. And here it is, complete with a massive encounter with the Borg, clouds of débris, a terrifying new enemy, dissension among the commanding officers, and the unveiling of an entirely new kind of human—Borg hybrid. But because it’s Voyager, there’s also people doing things for no reason and a central conflict disposed of in an unsatisfying way. But (again) because it’s Voyager, there’s some great weird visuals, a cool new holodeck program, and yet another arresting performance from the Queen of Star Trek, Her Royal Highness, Captain Kathryn Janeway.