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As the starship Voyager journeys ever closer to
home, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres get married and produce
their first child; the crew bid farewell to Azan, Mezoti,
Rebi and Neelix, as they stay behind in the Delta Quadrant;
Icheb elects to remain on board with his mentor Seven of Nine;
and the Doctor makes a stand for holographic rights...
As
was the case with the final
season of The Next Generation, Season
7 of Voyager sees a slight downturn in quality.
The
episodes Drive, Repression, The Void
and Homestead are all rather bland. Drive is
a racing episode - enough already with the sports-related
storylines, please! Homestead is another dull Neelix
(Ethan Phillips) story.
Imperfection,
Nightingale, Repentance, Prophecy and
the series finale Endgame are all merely OK. Imperfection
writes out all of the former Borg children (Marley S. McClean,
Cody Wetherill and Kurt Wetherill) apart from Icheb (Manu
Intiraymi), who decides to stay on board. Prophecy
brings Klingons to the Delta Quadrant in a rather neat way,
in a generational ship, but the mythological idea of B'Elanna
(Roxann Dawson) being some kind of Klingon prophet and her
unborn baby a saviour is confusing and unconvincing.
Though full of action and featuring the return of the Borg
(we would have been very disappointed if it hadn't) Endgame
is mostly a missed opportunity. How will the former Maquis
members of the crew integrate back into society? How will
the people of the Alpha Quadrant react to the presence of
the ex-Borg Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Icheb? How will
Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) react when she is reunited
with her former fiancé Mark, who has married another woman
during her absence? None of these questions are answered in
this episode. Fans would have to wait until Christie Golden's
novel Homecoming
was published before these issues would be addressed.
In
the featurette Coming Home: The Final Episode on the
last disc of this box set, the producers explain that they
wanted to surprise their audience. There's a fine line between
defying audience expectations and disappointing them, and
Endgame crosses that line.
For
an episode that seeks to challenge expectations, there's an
awful lot of Endgame that seems familiar. The designs
of the future Starfleet uniforms and communicators are the
same as those used in The Next Generation's final episode,
All Good Things..., which serve to remind us that the
time travel aspect of the story isn't such an original idea.
Alice Krige replaces Susanna Thompson as the Borg Queen, reprising
her role from the movie Star
Trek: First Contact. However, there is no explanation
as to why or how she suddenly decided to revert to her old
body.
The
resolution of the previous season's finale, Unimatrix Zero,
Part II, another Borg episode, fares rather better. So
do the moving medical drama Critical Care, the feature-length
Flesh and Blood, the time-anomaly tale Shattered,
the unexpectedly good Lineage, the two-part Workforce,
Human Error, Q2, Friendship One and Natural
Law.
Flesh
and Blood is presented in feature-length format, which
is preferable to the two-part syndicated version, which has
a rather arbitrary and lacklustre "cliffhanger" at its halfway
point. Holography once more proves to be an excellent device
for involving alien races that cannot usually be used in Voyager,
including the Alpha Quadrant's Bajorans, Breen, Cardassians
and Romulans, and the Gamma Quadrant's Jem'Hadar.
On a similar note, time travel is useful for resurrecting
departed popular characters. In Shattered the character
in question is the villain Seska. This episode marks the excellent
Martha Hackett's final appearance as Seska, while Q2
sees the final appearance to date of John de Lancie as everyone's
favourite entity, Q.
The
two-part Workforce is unfortunately very similar to
the Stargate: SG-1 episode Beneath the Surface,
while Human Error retreads territory already covered
in the classic TNG episode Hollow Pursuits,
as Seven's attempts to perfect her social skills on the holodeck
become an obsession. However, both stories are still very
enjoyable.
But the real highlights of this season are Inside Man,
Body and Soul, Author, Author and Renaissance
Man. Inside Man sees the return of not only Dwight
Schultz as Reg Barclay, but also Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi
and the Ferengi in an episode that is by turns amusing
and dramatic.
Body
and Soul bawdily goes where the Red Dwarf episode
Bodyswap has gone before, as the Doctor (Robert Picardo)
downloads his program into Seven's implants (her cybernetic
implants, that is) and accidentally takes over her body. While
he's in there the Doctor gets his first taste of food and
also becomes sexually aroused and starts to flirt.
In
Author, Author the Doctor pens a holonovel, Photons
Be Free, which is loosely based on the crew of a certain
Federation starship. Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) becomes a Trill
with Bolian hypochondria and Chakotay becomes a Bajoran with
a Klingon tattoo, while Roxann Dawson appears out of her usual
Klingon makeup as Lt Tory. The humour is counterpointed by
serious issues about individuality and freedom of speech.
Renaissance
Man is another great Doctor episode, in which the hologram
is forced to impersonate various members of the crew.
All
in all, this is a good season for fans of the Emergency Medical
Hologram, as we get to see the ever-reliable Robert Picardo
take centre stage in Critical Care, Flesh and Blood,
Author, Author and Renaissance Man. He is also
the focus of this season's Voyager Time Capsule and
is also involved in The Making of Borg Invasion 4D,
which goes backstage at the theme park attraction in Las Vegas.
In
total, there are around 90 minutes' worth of documentary featurettes,
which also include a look Inside Voyager's Scenic Art Department.
There are also some storyboards, but these aren't particularly
well presented. They are poorly organised and carry little
or no explanation of what each board refers to.
Season
7 may not be Voyager's best one, but there's still
plenty here to enjoy.
Richard
McGinlay
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