Craggus’ Trek Trek:
Now, Voyager! Vol 12
Craggus’ Trek Trek Now Voyager Vol 12 takes us from the end of season four and into the unexplored voids of season five.
Star Trek Voyager S4E22: Unforgettable
An ironically titled romantic drama for Chakotay that’s unlikely to linger in the memory for much longer than its runtime, it does feature notable guest star Virginia Madsen as Kellin, a member of a reclusive alien race who are, effectively, a more attractive and gentle version of Doctor Who’s The Silence. Directed by Deep Space Nine’s Andrew Robinson, he manages to make this plain and simple story of doomed romance passably intriguing as he leans heavily into the conspiracy of the lost memories and the difficulties in protecting an asylum seeker from a race that is expert in removing all trace of their presence.
Star Trek Voyager S4E23: Living Witness
Another entry in the “great Voyager stories where the Voyager crew *aren’t* the Voyager crew” oeuvre, this time we’re treated to a view of exactly what it means when history is written by the victors. Seven hundred years in the future (so, intriguingly, contemporaneously with Star Trek Discovery Season 3), the Doctor (or at least a backup of him) finds himself reactivated in a museum dedicated to Voyager’s interaction with the conflict between the Kyrians and Vaskans and the war crimes they committed along the way. The regular cast has a lot of fun bringing their fascist incarnations to life in what ends up being the closest we’ll get to a Voyager Mirror Universe episode and all-in-all it’s a powerful allegory for the danger of revisionist history being used as a weapon to keep an entire race oppressed.
Star Trek Voyager S4E24: Demon
In a turn of events long overdue or out of nowhere, depending on your point of view, Voyager suddenly runs out of fuel and faces a desperate plight. Salvation, however, may lie in the most inhospitable of places: a demon-class planet whose atmosphere may be inimical to life but abundant in deuterium. Once again, it’s the ship’s whipping boy Harry Kim who comes a cropper, first going missing and then turning up in rude health without his environmental suit. It’s a nice mix of sci-fi shenanigans and medical detective drama that, on its own, is passable enough but lays the foundations for a much better episode to come. On its own merits, though, it’s still a lesser entry in the storied pantheon of decent Voyager episodes where the characters are not their usual selves.
Star Trek Voyager S4E25: One
An episode twenty-two years ahead of its time as the crew of Voyager go into Lockdown to survive a hostile region of space leaving the Doctor and Seven to go stir-crazy. A good episode at the time, recent real-life events elevate it to great as Seven’s increasing discomfort at being isolated underlines just how far the character has already come and while she might be missing the cold embrace of the collective, you clearly get the sense she’s missing the company of her new crewmates even more. Exciting and creepy in equal measure, it’s a clever episode with a few standout moments proving once again that no other Trek series does horror quite as well as Voyager does.
Star Trek Voyager S4E26: Hope And Fear
There are lies, damn lies and Ray Wise in a spectacular bald cap as too-good-to-be-true alien Samaritan Arturis. While there’s plenty of substance here to have built a two-parter on and yet it benefits from a strong sense of story and momentum by remaining within a single episode to wrap up a largely successful fourth season. The prospect of a quicker journey home comes with some surprisingly mixed feelings, with the idea of abandoning Voyager herself not sitting easily with a crew that has been through so much with their redoubtable ship. Ray Wise is superb as the softly spoken wolf in sheep’s clothing whose motives are anything but pure as he seeks revenge against Voyager for their role in helping the Borg defeat Species-8472. While not reaching the lofty heights of Deep Space Nine’s sublime continuity and despite the fundamental premise which keeps the series inexorably on the move, Star Trek: Voyager does a much better job of any other ship-bound Trek series of exploring and dealing with the consequences of our heroes’ actions.
Star Trek Voyager S5E01: Night
It’s a confident, even bold, choice to kick off your new season with an episode focussing on how completely bored all your characters are. Thankfully, it’s an approach that only lasts until around the halfway point when the story picks up as the nature of “The Void” is revealed. It introduces two new races to the Trek pantheon, one of which will go on to have a recurring, if not entirely successful, role to play. After trolling us with a literally boring beginning, the series explodes into life with action and environmental allegory and some nice character moments for Janeway as we get a brief glimpse behind the facade of steely determination and righteousness certainty.
Star Trek Voyager S5E02: Drone
Baby borg, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Baby borg, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Baby borg, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Baby borg Mommy Seven, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Mommy Seven, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Mommy Seven, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Mommy Seven Daddy EMH, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Daddy EMH, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Daddy EMH, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo Daddy EMH Although the first part of the story occasionally finds itself tiptoeing around an uncomfortable subtext of unplanned pregnancy and abortion, it soon bypasses that ethical quagmire in favour of reimagining the classic TNG episode “I, Borg“. While Janeway’s arc here is pretty much the same as Picard’s, the real appeal of this episode is Seven’s role as reluctant caregiver to the crew’s newest recruit. It’s a role that works so well for the character, it would be revisited on a more permanent basis later in the series’ run after this story’s vindication of nurture vs nature make a return appearance by One unlikely.
Star Trek Voyager S5E03: Extreme Risk
When Tom’s slackadaisical attitude starts rubbing off on B’Elanna, the man himself gets a new lease of life when he picks up a new hobby: the Delta Flyer. Engaged in a race against time with the Malon to recover a multi-spatial probe, the crew decide to construct the series’ equivalent to Deep Space Nine introducing the Defiant and given the number of regular shuttles they’ve crashed or lost so far, there’s probably plenty of room in the shuttle bay going spare. It’s actually quite a fun episode that’s held back by an awkwardly juxtaposed and moribund follow-up to the “Hunters” episode where B’Elanna and Chakotay learned the Maquis had been wiped out by The Dominion. Torres’ appetite for destruction never feels authentic and while it’s good to see a series like this acknowledge, let alone address, the subject of depression it’s little more than a token gesture that is never touched upon again.
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