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In another eventful year, Captain Janeway and her crew encounter
a 29th-century Borg drone, discover a simulation of Starfleet
Headquarters, create a holographic Cardassian war criminal,
find a world composed entirely of water, make several trips
through time, and cross paths with another Starfleet vessel
similarly stranded in the Delta Quadrant...
This
is another high-quality season, which is at least as good
as the one that preceded it.
Must-see
episodes include Nothing Human, in which a holographic
simulation of Crell Moset (David Clennon), a Dr Mengele-style
scientist with expertise in alien biology, is B'Elanna Torres'
(Roxann Dawson) best hope for survival. Is it morally acceptable
to make use of knowledge gained by immoral means? That's the
difficult question raised by this, the final Voyager
episode to be penned by the show's co-creator Jeri Taylor.
Course:
Oblivion is the surprising and gruesome coda to an earlier
episode, while Drone makes inventive use of Borg technology.
The two-part Dark Frontier also features the deadly
Borg, including the unexplained return of their Queen (this
time played by Susannah Thompson). It may be less original
than Drone, but it couldn't have been more spectacular.
Similarly eye-catching is the icy crash-landing depicted in
the 100th episode, Timeless, one of two irresistible
time-travel stories this season. The other one is Relativity,
which sees the return of the 29th-century Captain Braxton
(this time played by Bruce McGill) from Future's End.
Several
episodes feature Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and Harry
Kim's (Garrett Wang) new holodeck program. Brilliantly and
affectionately aping the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon
serials of old, these black-and-white "Captain Proton" segments
are full of boxy robots, sparking rockets and over-the-top
villainy. The spoof's pinnacle is Bride of Chaotica!,
an episode devoted almost entirely to Captain Proton.
Other
instalments worth watching out for include Extreme Risk,
which sees Tom's construction of the Delta Flyer shuttlecraft;
Thirty Days, which features a well-realised water world
and sees Paris valiantly defying regulations; Counterpoint,
a potent tale of xenophobia and asylum; Latent Image,
Voyager's take on the Red Dwarf episode Thanks
for the Memory (The Next Generation did something
similar in Clues); and Bliss, in which a possible
route back to the Alpha Quadrant naturally proves too good
to be true.
The
season concludes with one of the franchise's best cliffhangers
ever: Equinox, which introduces us to a cool new class
of starship and its desperate and ruthless captain, Rudy Ransom
(played by Dark Angel's John Savage).
The
only really bad instalment is the dreadful Neelix (Ethan Phillips)
/ Naomi Wildman (Scarlett Pomers) episode, Once Upon a
Time - though Chakotay's (Robert Beltran) boxing episode,
The Fight is also pretty tiresome, despite the presence
of an illusory Boothby (Ray Walston), the famous groundskeeper
from the TNG episode The First Duty.
Boothby
also appears in the final Species 8472 episode to date, In
the Flesh. This is an appealing story, thanks to its re-creation
of Starfleet Headquarters, though it does weaken the species
in the same way that TNG's I, Borg diluted the
Borg menace, by showing that the aliens have a sympathetic
side.
The
starship continues to make progress in its quest to get back
to the Alpha Quadrant, shaving several years off its voyage
in Night, Timeless and Dark Frontier.
Disc 7 contains 90 minutes of special features, including
Voyager Time Capsule spotlights on B'Elanna Torres
and Tom Paris; a brief interview with the Borg Queen Susannah
Thompson; a look at make-up design; and Ships of the Delta
Quadrant, in which Senior Illustrator Rick Sternbach takes
us through the processes that went into the creation of many
of the series' spaceships. Sternbach also explains how the
USS Voyager managed not to run out of shuttlecraft
during its dangerous seven-year journey!
Voyager
is very much alive in Season 5.
Richard
McGinlay
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