Date: December 21 , 2020

Season 5, Episode 14

Musical Accompaniment: Finally on songs that start with ‘T’!

Interstellar News: Today was very productive and the start of a three day week before “vacation”. I’ll still be working during break, but my days won’t be as full.

Also, the title of this episode reminds me of a wonderful book named Goblin Precinct by Keith R.A. DeCandido (who also has written a hell of a lot of Trek fiction). In it is a drug called Bliss that proves to be fatal. You can order it anywhere, along with the other books in the Precinct universe that are pretty awesome. If you order from Keith’s site directly, he’ll even autograph them for you!

TL;DR: Qatai, an older alien, yells at his ship while he flies right into what looks like a storm. Voyager finds a wormhole that leads straight to Earth and, while skeptical at first, the whole crew buys into its authenticity… except for Seven and Naomi Wildman. The hits keeps coming as there are letters from Starfleet, Janeway’s boyfriend is no longer engaged, Chakotay’s going to get a pardon, Paris and Neelix have dream job offers, and more. Everyone is so excited and suspicious Seven enlists the EMH… who is then taken offline and Seven is supposed to go into stasis. Seven tries to disable to ship but they wind up in the “wormhole” and everyone passes out, except Seven and Naomi. They meet Qatai, who is also trapped, and he explains that the “wormhole” is really a beast that shows ships exactly what they want to lure them to it and then it eats their biomatter. After reactivating the EMH they develop a plan which works and is then a trap but it really works the second time and the rest of the crew comes back to and they resume a real course for home.

Favorite Quote:

EMH: Please state the nature of the medical emergency.

Qatai: Your ship is being devoured. I’d say that’s an emergency.

Qatai is just a little dramatic.

“I’m a Doctor, not a dragon slayer. My program requires that I do no harm.”: I loved that Paris, Seven, and Naomi were on a mission together and they had wonderful banter in the shuttle. It makes sense that Seven doesn’t want to go to Earth, but doesn’t Naomi want to meet her father? This was a fun mystery episode because, at first, Janeway is all like “okay let’s not get too excited” but then she’s clearly being decided and doesn’t care at all. All along I knew something was wrong and was hoping that Qatai wasn’t part of the illusion… kind of like when Seven was alone and was hallucinating. I was glad when Qatai wasn’t part of the illusion, even with his tragic backstory, and he added a nice gruffness to the story. I also liked that there was that little twist at the end when Seven thought she was out of the monster but they weren’t really and she had to trust everyone else around her. It’s a crushing blow for the crew who remember everything, I almost wish they would have felt drugged and didn’t remember anything – but maybe that will teach them to listen to Seven in the future. 7 books in the series, as I hear Keith is working on the next book – Phoenix Precinct.

TA Out!

Date: December 19, 2020

Season 5, Episode 12

Musical Accompaniment: Holding steady with songs that begin with the letter ‘S’, but coming up on the last of them (or maybe not, there are 171!)

Interstellar News: I feel like I didn’t do anything today, but I did watch four episodes of Trek… so there’s that. I’m only writing about one because it’s so late… but the others will come.

TL;DR: Kim and Paris are playing “Captain Proton” when they crash land on Planet X and encounter something strange in the holodeck, but cannot stop the program. Voyager has come to a dead stop and has entered a layer of subspace. Kim and Paris are able to transport themselves out of the holodeck but Voyager stays stuck. Some photonic aliens beam onto the holodeck and think Chaotica is the enemy, so they start attacking him. The crew realizes they can’t shut the holodeck down so Paris has the “bright” idea of sending Janeway in as Queen Arachnia to disable the death ray so Paris as Proton can allow the photonic aliens to win. Janeway does an amazing job, they also send the EMH in as the President of Earth to negotiate with the photonic aliens since they believe the holodeck is the real world, and in the end Proton and team wins the day and Chaotica dies… or does he?!

Favorite Quote:

Seven of Nine: It seems your infantile scenario now poses a security risk.

Kim: It was just supposed to be a little harmless entertainment.

Seven of Nine: Entertainment. Another frivolous human endeavor.

Seven is not wrong, but it is a thing that has kept me quite sane during this apocalypse.

“Listen to me very carefully because I’m only going to say this once. Coffee, black.”: So this started off as a fun mystery and then they lost me as soon as Paris pitches Janeway to finish the holodeck chapter. There have got to be other ways to shut down the holodeck or, and wait for it, you get the EMH to talk to the photonic aliens just like he did. Once you get past that, and the screaming by Miss Goodheart, it’s a fun cosplay/holodeck-as-a-plot-device episode. I loved that Neelix was doing the thing that these shows almost never do and talked about people’s grooming habits – like going to the bathroom and showering. You forget just how many things need power (um, everything) when you’re on a spaceship. There were also some really great one liners, like when Chaotica calls Janeway an “impetuous harlot” or when Kim and Paris together scream “THE OTHER PANEL” at the EMH when he almost hits the wrong button. There was a lot of humor, Janeway getting to act silly, and a strange first contact situation that was resolved rather harmlessly. I’m rating this episode 8 cauliflower bread sticks that are surprisingly dense but tasty.

TA Out!

Date: December 17, 2020

Season 5, Episode 11

Musical Accompaniment: Am still on songs that begin with the letter ‘S’, and there are SO MANY that have the word “some” in them.

Interstellar News: I am very glad it is Thursday.

TL;DR: The EMH takes holoimages of everyone but finds something unusual when he scans Kim; a surgery he doesn’t remember performing and one Kim doesn’t remember getting from 18 months ago. The Doctor asks for Seven’s help running a self-diagnostic, but then doesn’t remember asking for her help. They are able to find five images on his camera of a mystery Ensign and mystery alien, as well a few snippets of memory that were hidden from the Doctor. Janeway sends Seven to look for cloaked ships, asks the Doctor to deactivate himself for his safety, and then shares a look with Tuvok. The Doctor saves a backup and sets up his camera to take pictures and then deactivates himself as someone comes into sickbay to adjust his program… and it’s Janeway. She explains that something happened and they had to adjust his programming because it caused a problem, and now she’s got to do it again. Seven appeals to Janeway and Janeway decides to share the story with the Doctor, so we see a flashback.

We start with Ensign Jetal’s surprise party, a mission with her, the Doctor, and Kim, an enemy alien who attacks them all, Voyager coming to the rescue, and the Doctor trying to stop them from both dying. He can’t save them both so he chooses Kim while Jetal dies. He can’t reconcile why he choose Kim over her and looses his shit in the mess hall, which then causes his cognitive and ethical subroutines to spiral… so Janeway ordered him to be reprogrammed. The Doctor again begins to spiral but after another chat with Seven, Janeway decides to help him get through it. Everyone sits with the Doctor over a period of two weeks and eventually he sends Janeway to bed and reads her poetry, seemingly starting to get some peace at his decision.

Favorite Quote:

Janeway: A replicator operates through a series of electronic pathways that allow it to receive instructions and take appropriate action, and there you go. A cup of coffee, a bowl of soup, a plasma conduit, whatever we tell it to do. As difficult as it is to accept, the Doctor is more like that replicator than he is like us.

Seven of Nine: He would disagree.

Janeway: I’m sure he would, but I can’t let that change my decision. I learned that the hard way when his program almost self-destructed. I won’t take that risk again.

Seven of Nine: The risk isn’t yours to take.

Janeway and Seven discussing ethics at 0200. To quote Ted Mosby, “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.”.

“You’re malfunctioning, and you need to be repaired.”: This is a very interesting episode. At first it’s a cool, new technology to help aid the Doctor… kind of like a full body scan but much more sci-fi. It’s immediately a mystery and there might be an intruder, much like when the EMH was being messed with in “Scientific Method“. As soon as Janeway and Tuvok share a look in her ready room, I know something is up and it’s clear the EMH thought so too. Then the story morphs into ethics on a variety of fronts and ends up with a giant group counseling session. It’s also an interesting way to bring in some new faces by doing a story in the time before Seven. There is also a really nice set up as the Doctor tells Kim he’s not in the business of killing people (by choosing to not space the alien) and minutes later he has to make a decision about who to save. Paris and Seven do excellent work in this episode. Paris is immediately in “go” mode when Kim and Jetral are brought into sickbay and you can see that he and the EMH are triaging and brainstorming together, but ultimately Paris knows on the Doctor can make the call. Seven advocates for the Doctor, who has been her champion, and even gets Janeway to reconsider her position now that she’s had more time to think about it.

Writing this during the ninth month of the Coronavirus pandemic here in the United States, this episode is extremely sobering. Health professionals are choosing who to treat all the time due to capacity or even just not having enough time to get to everyone. Do you try to save an old person or a young person? Do you try to save the person with the best prognosis regardless of age? Do you just try to save everyone and take it hard when you can’t? It’s an impossible decision. I make a similar, but not at all comparable in regard to life and death, decision when choosing who to enroll in the last section of a class. Majors are given priority, but what if they are both majors? Do I go by GPA, closeness to graduation? If we all think about our jobs, we make these decisions every day… but sometimes they don’t really have a large ripple effect like Covid does. The Doctor, in this episode, tries to understand why he made the decision he did when he had two patients in the exact same situation. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to pull a Batman and save them both, but now he knows the weight behind his position and what toll it takes to make those decisions. 7 cups of lukewarm coffee for Janeway here.

TA Out!