VOY: “Pathfinder”

Date: February 5, 2021

Season 6, Episode 10

Music Video of the Day: Happy 5th Day of Black History Month!

Interstellar News: If you’re not watching WandaVision, you really need to. Episode 5 requires a lot of tissues. Also I washed, dried, and folded four loads of laundry today. Go me!

TL;DR: At least two years after First Contact, Barclay is working at Starfleet Headquarters and has Troi over while she’s on shore leave. He’s become obsessed with Voyager, is as awkward as ever, and is back to his old holodeck tricks. He believes there’s a way to make two-way contact with Voyager, but he winds up getting thrown off the project. Troi offers to take some leave to help Barclay work through this, but he breaks into the lab instead and enacts his plan without authorization. His plan works, Voyager and Starfleet are able to communicate, and Barclay even starts a relationship with a woman named Hope… who also likes cats!

Favorite Quote:

Barclay: Has it ever occurred to you that a tachyon beam directed at a class B itinerant pulsar could produce enough gravimetric energy to create an artificial singularity?

Troi: I can’t say it has.

Troi looks technobabble in the face and doesn’t let it bother her one bit.

“You did what you could. Now it’s time to let Starfleet worry about Voyager. We need to take care of you.”: I didn’t realize how much I needed this episode until it was finished. We’re almost halfway through the sixth season and it’s almost six years that Voyager has been lost in the DQ, and it’s only been a year since Starfleet even knew they were (mostly) all still alive. We’ve been following along with Voyager for so long and there have been very few bits in the AQ, it just feels like the perfect time. Barclay is also the perfect person to be on this project because he is so damned awkward, but also super smart, and his method of an interactive diagnostic makes it so that he is invested in the project. Troi, showing her counseling prowess, tries to explain that Barclay is just as important as the crew of Voyager and he needs to follow the chain of command. I love that Barclay names his cat Neelix, that the real Neelix was going to take singing lessons from Seven until she decided there was no helping him, and that in Barclay’s simulation the Maquis outfits are super spiffy. I’ll admit, I teared up at the end when Admiral Paris spoke to the crew and to his son. Two dings on this episode, though. You can’t abandon ship in only 20 seconds and the security nerds of Starfleet have no idea how to keep their rogue engineers out of anything. The secondary embarrassment was also a bit hard to watch at times, but that’s mostly because Barclay is super, duper awkward. Despite those, I generally just adored this episode and give it 8 rounds of poker in the mess hall.

TA Out!