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REVIEW/SYNOPSIS:
They're mocking me. I know they are. It's so obvious.
This episode begins with a shot of the stars out a window. The stars, as always, are perfectly still. How exactly are they getting home?
But alas, I have no right to complain in this instance, because that wasn't a real window I was looking out of, it was holodeck. Foiled again.
The holodeck, by the way, is looking quite fixed up from it's total destruction in [i]The Killing Game[/i]. It's nice to see that Voyager is wasting resources on non-essential aspects of daily life.
I shouldn't complain though, because without the holodeck, how else would we learn the basis for today's story? Namely: Seven is anti-social.
I'll wait for the gasps of surprise to die down.
As I was saying, Seven is anti-social, and her efforts at learning to engage in conversation aren't working out so well. She has a tendency to fire off the questions as quickly as possible, without waiting for the other person to finish speaking. Reminds me of my Ex.
Budump bump, CHING!
Anyway, back on real Voyager, the ship is heading (at impulse, of course) towards a nebula. And not just any Nebula. A Mutara Nebula. That's only a few letters from a "Mutant" Nebula. And I've seen X-men. I know how dangerous those mutants can be. That one blue lady can take over your soul!
Tuvok informs us that the nebula "expands beyond our sensors" which would means it's a good coupla light years in either direction. Janeway decides to not try to go around it (and when Warp Power seems to be offline, I guess going around it would be kinda hard) and orders Voyager into the nebula at half-impulse.
Never-mind the fact that at sub-light speeds it would take years to get through the nebula, or the fact that Kirk and Company dealt with a "Mutara" nebula some years ago to no ill effects. Within moments of ordering the ship into the nebula, the entire bridge crew starts gasping and choking, radiation burns (or just really nasty warts) breaking out on their extremities. Yikes!
Tom struggles to crawl over to his console, and move the ship away from the nebula, but ends up falling on his face. Janeway cries out for the Doctor, "We need help! Hurry!" and the Doctor sends Seven (who just happened to be in sickbay) to the bridge with a dermal regenerator (aka: The healing gun)
Tuvok wanders aimlessly over to Tom's station, and drunkenly taps in new coordinates. The over-the-top moans of Janeway and crew play on in the background. I smell ham.
Mere seconds after laying in the coordinates, Harry indicates that they have cleared the nebula. But not before a nameless crewmen gets his entire face burned off and dies. How come he doesn't warrant a time-traveling Janeway to come back and save him? And how come no one even knows his name? And why don't they use some nano-probes on him to bring him back to life?
Cause he's just for dramatic effect, that's why. And the author of "Mortal Coil" didn't realize the giant can of worms he spewed forth.
The Doctor tells Janeway that the problem is that the nebula's gas is full of [technobabble] radiation. Very hazardous to organic tissue. The real question is: How does nebula gas get onto a space ship that's airtight? And with shields, a structural integrity field, AND artificial life support?
Poor writing, that's how.
The Doctor suggests that they use stasis-chambers to put the crew to sleep while he pilots the ship through the Nebula. Janeway decides to go with that plan, but with Seven as the backup, since she was unaffected by the [technobabble] radiation too. How conveeeeenient.
Now, the real question is: Why not go around it? Sure, it'll take you longer, but there's a much greater chance of your skin not getting burned off by fake-radiation.
Which would you choose: A year more to an already long journey, or a month inside a Mutara-burnyourfleshoff-Nebula, with only a hologram (we know how reliable they are) and an ex-Borg as security?
During a senior staff meeting (Tuvok is mysteriously missing, as is the Doctor) Tom brings up a good point when he says, "I assume all the other alternatives have been explored"
Janeway is quick to brush this off with a speech about how people like to be in control of their own lives. No answer to his question seems forthcoming. A chance for the writers to give one of the male characters a backbone fails miserably.
After the meeting, Chakotay wants to know why the heck Seven is being left in charge (She's not Chuckles, the Doctor is. But then, you've probably read the script and realized he's not gonna be much help...) Janeway chalks up to instinct, and Chakotay wags his tail and trots off.
The Doctor quickly scrounges up 150 stasis-chambers, and the crew goes beddy-bye. Another question that begs being asked is: How does being asleep save you from skin-burning radiation? Are the walls of the chamber somehow made of special material that the hull is not? Doesn't make any sense. That's why it's called a plot device.
Ten days later, as Seven informs us in a personal log, and the ship is still cruising along (at impulse) through the nebula. Don't know how they expect to go 110 light years at UNDER the speed of light, but I'm no Borg.
As a side note: Even though the nebula is all full of pink gasses and whatnot, the windows show nothing but the normal backdrop of non-moving stars and black space. Sounds like the SFX budget was blown on last episode's crapfest: Demon.
As Seven goes about her daily chores, she stumbles upon Tom, sprawled out in a doorway. She hails the Doctor, and tells him that Tom has somehow gotten out of his stasis-pod, and began wandering around. Remarkably, he's not burned alive, which suggests that this was all an elaborate scheme by the Doctor to spend some time alone with Seven. That sly devil!
After Seven gets all irritable and mean with the Doctor, he orders her to the holodeck for a refresher course in dealing with people. It's pretty much just an excuse to get Neelix in this episode, as his holographic persona is the one that encourages Seven to "join the (fake) party", and eventually gets tricked by Seven into helping her figure out how to modify the [technobabble].
The Doctor chastises Seven for not indulging herself in the program, when suddenly the ship shakes. And we all know that when the ship shakes, something bad is happening. Sure enough, the anti-matter containment [technobabble] is failing. Seven and the Doctor rush to find out what happened. Seven heads to Engineering while the Doctor heads to the Bridge. From there, he gives her the heads up: The hull is breaching, and engineering is flooded with plasma. She rushes down there anyway (if a power-walk can be considered rushing) and opens the doors to find Engineering in perfect condition.
BUM BUM BUM.
Turns out that the bio-gel packs are getting all screwy cause of the radiation, and giving off false information. The dynamic duo heads into a jefferies tube to go fix it. Of course, we the viewers realize that this is just another one of the Doctor's tricks in order to get he and Seven alone and on all fours. Kinky.
PLOT DEVICE ALERT: Suddenly, the Doctor's program starts to degrade! He has to get back to sickbay, because if his mobile emitter fails while he's out of sickbay, he could be be irretrievably lost! This, of course, is one big pile of horse manure. Does the Doctor's program somehow leave the ships computer when he puts on the mobile emitter? Nope. This episode is fast catching up with "Demon" in the number of plot contrivances it has.
Blah blah blah, Doctor and Seven get back to sickbay just in time for his mobile emitter to go kaputz. Now the Doctor is stuck in Sickbay, and Seven has to deal with the ship all by herself.
It only took half an hour and a whole bunch of silly plot devices for them to finally get to the point of the episode: Seven alone on the ship. Is it really worth it? My money's on no, unless she starts walking around naked or something.
Several weeks later, and Seven begins having nightmares about standing in the middle of a frozen wasteland, clad in nothing but a skintight catsuit, and facing horrible nipple pain!
The computer starts getting all wacky, and Seven looks forward to the end of the journey, in only six more days. Unfortunately, she is now crazy. As she travels the ships corridors, she hears Tom's voice pleading for her help. She follows his voice, but all she finds is him asleep in his coffi...I mean stasis pod.
Soon after, the Computer detects a ship approaching. Seven hails the ship (most of the audience realizes that it's not really there) and invites the pilot over to Voyager for tea and biscuits, as well as to trade for some liquid helium.
She ends up pulling a phaser on him in order to get him to leave, but is distracted by the voices in her head (Tom pleading for help again) and the alien "escapes"
After checking in with the Doctor (who is unable to find the alien on sensors) Seven grabs a phaser rifle and heads off to find the alien and have a few psychotic episodes. She starts hearing the voices again, this time of the entire crew pleading for her help. She checks in on the stasis-pods, finding them all in good health, and heads back out.
The alien contacts her again, and starts threatening to [technobabble] the warp core, causing the ship to explode. She heads to engineering, and finds that nothing is wrong. He keeps taunting her, telling her to come to him at the bridge. Instead, she is distracted by hallucinations of Tom and Harry pleading for help, and then bursting into flames.
Seven ends up "Tricking" the alien by depleting the oxygen levels on the bridge, suffocating him. She the contacts the Doctor who has his mobile emitter back online, and tells him that she has the alien trapped on the bridge. He tells her he'll meet her in sickbay.
But before he gets there (maybe) the alien shows up, and Seven tries shooting him, only to realize that her phaser doesn't work on figments of her imagination. The Doctor shows up, and points out to her that the alien wasn't there. After he explains that the [technobabble] in her borg implants have been affected by the radiation, causing her to hallucinate, he disappears too. Gee, who would have thought the Doctor was a hallucination too?
Ho hum. 15 minutes of "scary" hallucinations left.
And 17 hours in Seven's reality. She's now having hallucinations non-stop, mostly of Harry being mean and a single Borg drone being a big ol' jerk to her.
Ok, gonna have to rush through the rest of this, as nothing really happens except for a bunch of hallucinations.
Seven has some hallucinations.
Seven has some more hallucinations.
Seven has some SCARY hallucinations.
Seven has some disturbing hallucinations.
Seven has some hallucinations and then passed out. When she wakes up, everything is fine.
IN RETROSPECT:
Hot off the heels of "Demon" we get another plot-driven episode with more holes than swiss cheese. Let's look at them, shall we?
1. The Mutara Nebula burns people's skin. Why? Because of a silly technobabble reason. There is no mention of why the shields can't block the radiation. But that's because it's just a plot device to get them into stasis pods.
2. The stasis-pods DO block the radiation. How? Doesn't matter, cause it's just a reason to keep the crew out of the way for the entire episode.
3. The nebula is 110 light years around. Let's do come quick estimating: 75,000 light years in 75 years. That's 1000 light years a per year. That means 110 light years could be done in a little over a month. Which means there's no reason to NOT go around the nebula. And hell, even if it would take a year to go around it, so what? It's better than risking having all your flesh burned off.
4. Seven doesn't get affected by the radiation (except to go crazy) Somehow, being partially borg means that the flesh-burning radiation doesn't burn her flesh. Doesn't make one lick of sense. She's still got skin, just like the rest of us.
5. The Doctor's mobile emitter just happens to be affected by the radiation, and if it goes offline with him out of sickbay, he is lost forever. (Nevermind the fact that he DOES go offline while out of sickbay, although some people may think that was a hallucination)
So what we have is another episode where someone came up with a "neat-o" idea. Hey! Let's have Seven be all alone on the ship! She's a borg, and she hates to be alone, even though she's antisocial! What a keen idea!
The problem is, no one thought of a plausible way to get this idea off the ground, so they just winged it and came up with a bunch of technobabble reasons to get rid of everyone else on the ship.
TO SUM UP:
Another predictable episode that takes way too long to get to the point. The scary parts are not really all that scary, since they are the same "person has crazy visions" we've been seeing since episodes like [i]Night Terrors[/i]. The plot holes are also pretty indicative of how Voyager writers do things: The ends justify the means. Doesn't matter that they were lazy and made up some stupid reason why Seven had to be alone, as long as they actually got her to be alone.
SCORE: 2/10. Nothing much going on here except lazy writing.
TOMORROW: HOPE AND FEAR