VOY: “Course: Oblivion”

Date: December 26, 2020

Season 5, Episode 17

Musical Accompaniment: Continuing Fantasies & Delusions, as each song is quite long.

Interstellar News: Tonight we social distanced with three dear friends around their bon fire and it was good to get out, though it was hella cold outside.

TL;DR: Paris, who is strangely a Lieutenant again, and Torres get married, Seven catches the bouquet, and the happy couple gets showered in rice that suddenly disappears into Voyager, as the ship is falling apart. They’ve installed the enhanced warp drive and believe they’ll get home in two years, give or take a few side quests. Torres and Seven realize Voyager was affected by the enhanced warp drive when suddenly Torres and a few others get sick, in fact the whole crew has cellular degradation. Torres dies and Chakotay and Tuvok figure out that they’re actually all of the duplicates that were created during the last few minutes of “Demon“. Janeway still thinks their mission is to get back to the AQ and nothing will deter her, except for Chakotay dying. Once this happens she has the ship turn around to try to get back to their planet, but more folks die and deteriorate. Janeway dies, Kim is in charge, and their time capsule explodes so they send out a distress call. The real Voyager finally gets in range but is too late, the ship has completely lost shape.

Favorite Quote:

Neelix: Are you sure this rice isn’t supposed to be cooked? Steamed, fried?

EMH: The idea is to shower the couple with a symbol of good fortune, not garnish them like a roast chicken.

Rice is no longer used in outdoor weddings as it can make the birds explode.

“We’ve come too far to be stopped by dust.”: This was a fun little episode, because some of the clues where there. Paris suddenly being back to his promoted rank, he and Torres getting hitched when there was no proposal beforehand, and the enhanced warp drive (where there was no mention of it before) was all a little fishy, not to mention the bit with the rice. However I had completely forgotten about the events of “Demon” until Chakotay and Tuvok were doing their investigation. I knew something was up when Torres died, but once I realized these were the duplicates it was hard to feel shocked when someone else died. The Janeway duplicate was so deep in the fantasy of Janeway’s life and mission, as were the rest of the crew, that they kind of screwed themselves when they didn’t immediately return to the planet. Once they realized what they were, they should have all said “fuck it, let’s go back to our home where we can live and be happy”. I’m also wondering what happened in the 10 months between when they were off having their own adventures if the real Voyager ever encountered someone who had heard of them and thought it strange. It was kind of fun and kind of gross to see them all deteriorating, but I will admit to not really being invested in their journey as much when they didn’t immediately turn around. 6 sweet potato dumplings for this follow up.

TA Out!