It's nice that they follow up on one of the more crazier episodes. Otherwise it's a pretty boring episode. You realize pretty quickly that's not the real Voyager crew you watched in the episodes before. The ending is also not very satisfying. Surprisingly sad given they are only duplicates. I really wanted them to reach their home. Back home, they could have learned why the copies were sent off from the demon planet in the first place. Why was that important to the inhabitants of the demon planet? And how did they copy the ship? As I remember the episode, they just copied the DNA and created copies of the crew. They did not copy technology did they? And what happened then? These guys watched the real Voyager take off. Thus they knew who is real and who's the copy. Does that mean they copied (themselves) again and have implanted the second batch the idea that they were the real deal? Hmmm.... I should not think too hard about it.
Not sure why they had to meet the real Voyager in the end. Was that just to show that everyone understands that the real crew (who we accompanied in the last episodes) is totally unaffected by the copies' voyage? I mean, in the real world, Tom isn't an Lt, is still a bachelor, and Voyager has never invented a new propulsion system, right? We only meet the copied ship and its crew in this one episode, right? Every other episode told the voyage of the real Voyager, right?
Review by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2018-07-22T14:53:23Z
Me at the start of this episode:
- What the hell, B'Elanna and Tom are getting married? When did this all happen?
- Tom's a Lieutenant? He was demoted. How stupid are the writers on this show?
- Voyager has a new warp core? Why is this the first we're hearing of it?! I hate this show.
And as it turns out it's all a deception, nicely done. I did not see it coming. That still doesn't change the fact that the episode is all just a bit shit, really. It's got to be one of the most depressing ones, too. The crew's generally subdued reactions to finding out they're not who they think they were, Tom being the one angry crew member and suddenly becoming an arsehole bad boy (like the series initially set him up to be, but forgot about), these things just don't ring true.
The makeup effects also look very silly, and I honestly couldn't stop laughing as the episode progressed. The performances didn't help either, with Janeway mostly coming across as sleepy, Neelix looking like a leprechaun and Harry looking like a frog.
On the positive side, I like that the episode picked up a storyline from a previous one and I was impressed that Jeri Ryan still looked gorgeous even with the "melting" makeup. The ending is really dark and final, something which I wasn't expecting.