Guest star Ray Wise makes this episode special, but even without him it would have been one of Voyager's stronger outings. I wish it had been more like this up to this point. The episode builds upon the relationships and experiences of the crew up to the point and takes what they've gone through into consideration. It also directly addresses Janeway's tendency to make selfish decisions without thinking the consequences through. However, I get the feeling that she won't particularly learn from this experience...
The Dauntless is a fascinating ship before it's revealed to be a lie. It's clear something is up early on - not only because we know that any opportunity for the crew to get home is going to fall through, but because the fancy new technology hasn't been developed or mentioned over on DS9.
Great scenes between Janeway and Seven, and a nice entry in the ongoing story. It's mostly unknown territory from this point forward for me, so this episode gives me hope that the quality may improve from here on.
[8.0/10] Captain Janeway makes her share of tough, controversial, and even questionable decisions. The continued chatter over whether she did the right thing with Tuvix can attest to that. I like that about Voyager. Being stranded in an unfamiliar region of space with no back-up means circumstances force you to make the type of calls other Starfleet captains don’t have to. Not every one of Janeway’s decisions is perfect, but the show is better, not worse, when she makes a choice that raises your eyebrow, and maybe your dander.
Which is why I love the villain’s motivation in “Hope and Fear”, the finale of the show’s fourth, and so far, best season -- because it represents the unforeseen consequences of one of those tough calls. In the beginning of the season, Janeway decided to ally with the Borg to help them fend off Species 8472 in exchange for safe passage. It was a hard decision, with the fate of the crew on the line. Chakotay disagreed with it. I disagreed with it. There’s plenty of room for debate about whether she did the right thing.
The most striking thing about it, though, is that she wasn’t just making a decision for her crew; she was making one for the whole delta quadrant. Arturis, the antagonist played with Ray Wise’s standard villain-y bent, saw his civilization destroyed by the Borg. He blames Janeway for it.
And by god, he has a point! Bolstering the Borg against Species 8472 altered the balance of power in the quadrant in a dramatic way. It’s hard to imagine a more drastic violation of the Prime Directive. You can weigh whether Species 8472 would have done their “kill the weak” routine across the rest of the galaxy, but it’s easy to suspect the Borg will continue their reign of terror and assimilation if you help them. Arturis fairly asks Janeway what gives her the right to make that decision, and even if his revenge plot is byzantine and theatrical, he’s not wrong to lay the blood of his people at her feet.
That’s a good thing! Decisions made in crisis amid existential threats are inherently difficult, as Janeway tries to explain. A cinematic universe where the ripple effects of these moral thought experiments don’t end when the credits roll is a richer, more interesting place to tell stories in. And I love the choice to have an enemy make legitimate arguments about how he was gravely wronged by our heroes, and have a sincere, justified belief that Janeway made the wrong choice.
But in all the explosive, ethically fraught fallout from the events of “Scorpion”, it’s clear there’s one key, but controversial decision from Janeway that was firmly in the right -- to bring Seven into this found family.
At heart, that’s what “Hope and Fear” is really about. It is a referendum on those two decisions, to help the Borg, and also to help a Borg. The past nine months have been a special project: to see if a drone can be rehabilitated, if she can rediscover her humanity, if she can be a valued member of the crew. The episode toys with our expectations on that front, teasing that Seven might abandon ship rather than face an uncertain life in the Alpha Quadrant. But that tease only makes the ultimate decisions from both her and Janeway that much more cathartic.
Because for the moment, the judgment of each of them is clouded by some of the titular “hope and fear.” For Janeway, she doesn’t want the prospect of hope to distract her from the reality and risks of what’s in front of her. When Arturis is able to decode the message from Starfleet Voyager received back in “Hunters”, it seems to point them to a ship called the Dauntless, with a “quantum slipstream drive” that could theoretically take them back home in a matter of months.
Honestly, I love how genre savvy is about the whole thing. One of the frustrating things about watching Voyager is how the show dangles the prospect of our heroes returning home in front of the audience over and over again, only to inevitably pull it away by the end of the episode, because otherwise you’d break the show. So seeing Janeway show caution about the latest “too good to be true” scenario, comment to Tuvok that this all feels too convenient, and acknowledge the fact that she’s been Charlie Brown trying to kick the football with all of this seems almost meta.
The script roots it in a sense of intuition, that through years of interactions and experience, Janeway’s developed the ability to recognize the nature of certain situations even before she has the proof to back it up. I don’t necessarily love that. The “forget the evidence, go with your gut” crowd has rightfully taken on a lot of water in the years since Voyager aired. But contrary to the villain’s point, Janeway is barging in here half-cocked based on a gut feeling, Kirk-style. She’s in “trust but verify” mode, excited at the prospect of this ship that could bring them home, but wanting to take every precaution before going whole hog in moving her crew to a new vessel and setting course for the Alpha Quadrant.
Still, it’s enough to force Seven to confront what it would mean to go back to Earth, and her judgment is affected by a much different emotion -- fear. It takes her til the end of the episode to admit it, but she’s afraid of how an ex-Borg will be received, of the adversity she’ll face given who and what she is, of how challenging it may be to adjust a planet of billions given her challenges to adapt to a ship of dozens.
And it leads to one of the episode’s best moments, where Seven tells Janeway that she’s hereby rejecting the values the Captain has tried to instill in her, and would rather be left adrift in the delta quadrant than go with Kathryn to a new home she doesn’t know and doesn’t trust.
Once again, part of what gives the Janeway/Seven relationship strength is that it takes on the character of one between a parent and an intransigent teenager. It’s especially true when Janeway tells Chakotay that Seven’s been combative and seems to challenge everything she says. To the point, there is something true to life about the way Seven, in a moment of anger and apprehension, basically tells Janeway, “I don’t want to be what you wanted me to be.” Their back-and-forth has a real “rebellious teen running away from home” sort of quality to it.
It works in-universe, as Seven is in a peculiar in-between stage between being Borg and being human, not sure where she quite fits in. And metaphorically, she’s a teenager between being a child and being an adult, not sure exactly who she wants to be. In both guises, Seven is trying to define herself, and it’s often easier to define yourself in opposition to something, whether a superior officer or a surrogate mother.
So when, later in the episode, Seven and Janeway work together to not only defeat Arturis, but to keep him from surrendering them to the Borg, it speaks to both parts of the choice Seven is making here. She chooses to maintain her individuality, not to return to the Collective, and take a big step toward accepting the path that Janeway has set her on. And she chooses to align with Janeway, to help her, fight for her, and stay a member of her crew. She even resolves to help find a way home. Free of that fear, bathed in the acceptance of someone who sees her potential, she decides to continue becoming a human being, the one Kathryn hoped she could be when she brought Seven on board.
And look, not every call the captain makes is the right one. When Seven frees her from the force field, Janeway has the opportunity to just tackle Arturis and keep him from sending them into the maw of the Borg. Instead, she tries to reason with him, to convince him to relent and accept that there’s a new life waiting for him where he can carry on the spirit of his people, rather than seek this grim revenge on a suicide mission.
It is, well, kind of stupid. Of course, being the bad guy, Arturis doesn’t listen, and in the time it takes her to give the big captain speech, he sics them on a collision course even he can’t reverse. It takes some last minute heroics from the rest of Voyager to save the day, conveniently giving the rest of the crew something important to due in the big climax,
But you know what? I don’t mind, because that’s Star Trek. What would this series be if Starfleet captains didn’t strive to do the noble thing, even if it isn’t always practical. And I don’t mind, because that’s Janeway. The choice to try to save Arturis’ soul is of the piece with her choice to try to save Seven’s. She doesn’t abandon people; she sees hope in them, and for them. Not every decision Captain Janeway makes is the right one, but when it comes to people, her people especially, she chooses to see the best in them. That is a tough call too, the kind that makes her great.
Good episode. It's a variation of earlier episodes in which a wormhole or something similar offers an opportunity to get home. They are all excited only to have their hopes destroyed. The problems with all these episodes is that you already know the likely outcome. They can't possibly find a way home before the last season. Still, this is the best of all of those similar episodes. The crew has another episode to bond, Seven has another episode to show that her character is special. And Janeway's tenacity and analytical thinking is something I always liked. Janeway and Seven have actually some very interesting dialogues here. And we have a formidable enemy here.
It's one of the few episodes where the crew feels repercussions from an earlier decision. It's not exactly the beginning of a coherent overarching story arch and you don't need to have watched earlier episodes to understand this episode, but it's good that the non-sequential pattern is a bit weakened.
PS: niche Holo deck game. I wonder how Guinan would compete. She is a good shooter.
Shout by FinFanBlockedParent2016-01-12T12:21:46Z
What I really like about this episode is that it shows that actions have consequences. That your decisions may come back to haunt you.
One thing that I think they were far to casual during the whole show was the fact that Voyager influenced many things along their way home. They involved themselves, on occaison, deeply with Delta Quadrant matters than beeing on there way again not looking back. This was the first time they wrote an episode where they were confronted with the long term implications of one decision they made that had a huge impact in basically whiping out an entire civilization.