Andrew Bloom

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9

[7.8/10] There’s been a subtle theme of people breaking good on The Boys this season. It’s always been a dark show about people messing up and playing in the dirt in the hopes of keeping others clean. And yet, there’s been throughlines -- about A-Train turning to the good, about MM coming into his own as a leader, in a weird way even about Homelander becoming a better father -- that brought more and more folks into the light.

You can see that in “Assassination Run”, the finale of season 4. Time again, people choose something better, more hopeful, with a more aspirational bent than The Boys’ usual cynicism.

After a season’s worth of struggling with her past and her identity, Annie January starts to reconcile with herself. It’s admittedly strange, albeit on brand for this show, that what pushes her to that point is a sociopathic doppelganger who thinks the worst of her after being inside of her head. Not for nothing, it’s Erin Moriarty’s best performance of the season, as she revels in getting to play the heel for once. And the show’s production team does extraordinary work in putting Starlight and her double on screen together in close quarters.

And yet, what gets Annie out of her funk is a little ambiguous, but seeing a vision of her worst self presents to her, giving her the opportunity to reject it. Beating up someone who looks exactly like you, Captain Kirk-style, can apparently give you some moral clarity. More importantly, though, Annie’s confident enough to know what she wants to fight for, and who she wants to fight for it with. That's enough for her to have a breakthrough and help save the day when it’s needed most.

Kimiko and Frenchie have a bit of a breakthrough too. After participating in all of this and feeling the good vibes through difficult circumstances, they resolve to try to forgive themselves a little bit each day. The idea that there is bravery in that, a chance to grow and move forward, is heartening, especially as they find solace in the comfort they provide to one another.

I’ll admit, I’ve never been a Frenchie/Kimiko shipper. The relationship always felt a little too brother/sister to me, and beyond that, a little troubling given the state that Frenchie found and nurtured Kimiko in. But I can't deny that they’re sweet together, and with a first kiss on tippy toes, sweetness isn’t bad amid all the darkness.

Hughie aims to cut through that darkness. If there’s something in The Boys that is aspirational, that speaks to human resilience and decency, it’s his pitch to his friends and allies. The cynical view is that too often, superhero flicks tell us implicitly that violence is the solution, and that the answer to terrible danger and vicious threats is to punch them in the mouth, preferably with a superpowered fist.

Hughie proposes something radical, albeit ironically in line with the philosophy of Professor X. He suggests that forgiveness is courageous, something he learned from his dad and extended to his mom. He’s seen the way his friends’ lives have become fucked up from them becoming monsters to fight monsters. He doesn’t want that anymore, for him or them.

So when Victoria Neuman wants out, when she realizes this is a constant cycle of mutually assured destruction that only ratchets up to become worse and worse, when she sends out an olive branch to The Boys, Hughie urges them to take it. They trust but verify, in MM’s words. But they are open to truth and reconciliation, to charting a different course than the brutal and bloodstained one that the cold war between Supes and those afraid of subjugation at their hands have been pursuing since The Boys began. So when Neuman walks in, daughter in tow, ready to give peace a chance, even after all they’ve been through, our heroes, super and otherwise, are ready to accept her and find another way.

And Billy Butcher comes to tear it, and her, completely apart.

When I wrote about the evil grin Billy Butcher let loose in “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son”, I compared it to the same one Tony Soprano gives in a late season episode of The Sopranos. Without giving anything away, if there’s a consistent theme in that show, it’s about people having opportunity after opportunity to make a turn for the better, to shed the damage and dirt they’re all mired in, and for time and time again, for generational inertia or institutional entropy or just plain selfishness to drag them back in the muck.

That's what I think of when I think of Billy Butcher here. God help him, for all that he’s been going through, he’s tried to keep a hold of his better self. He’s held onto the memory of Becca as the manifestation of his better angels. He’s set aside decimating all Supes because it would hurt one that he loves. He’s tried to protect his surrogate little brother, asking Hughie to carry on his wishes, even if he can't be there. He even offers an apology, albeit a vicarious one, to The Boys that he’s asked so much of. For as blackened as Billy Butcher’s soul has become, he’s held onto enough of the light to stay afloat.

And he’s done it for Ryan. God help him, he loves the kid. When Grace wants to push him or force him or cajole him, Billy gets her to ease off. He wants to convince the young lad, show him where he’s safe, rather than trap him in the same kind of cage where Homelander was made into a monster. This is a caring, empathetic side of Billy, the side that we’ve only seen come out rarely. And when he thinks he’s on his deathbed, when the easiest thing to do is try to tell a kid what’s what, he responds with compassion and kindness.

And it isn’t enough.

It’s not Billy’s fault. Everyone’s understandable here. Grace loves Ryan no less but she knows the stakes and takes a direct approach that just ends up scaring the poor kid. Ryan doesn’t know his own strength and rightfully fears being made into a lab rat or a weapon and doesn’t want a parent who fears him. And Billy knows the stakes too, but tries everything to reach the kid as a father, not a captor, and as a loved one.

And it still fails. Grace still dies for it, at Ryan’s hands. After everything, Ryan still goes back to Homelander.

That's it. The glass is shattered. The thing that held Billy Butcher back from the darkness is gone. He tried. He tried with everything in him when the easiest thing in the world was to give in. And it still wasn’t enough. As with Tony, there is tragedy in that, in someone succumbing to their worst impulses, and losing the good parts of them in the process. Especially when death and destruction follows in their wake.

All the good work comes to naught. The Supres get what they want. Homelander is unhinged and losing control. He outs Vicky. He scares off Ryan and seems to be threatening him. His proceeding based on impulse rather than plans results in him having to come up with a quickfire hitlist to keep people in line. And despite all his screw-ups, he comes out on top.

It’s the part I have the most mixed feelings about. There’s something to the idea that this was a part of Sage’s plan, albeit with a few bumps in the road. Her engineering the situation so that even Homelander’s predictable vanity leads things to where she wants them is a touch too perfect. But there’s something to be said for the idea of Homelander trying to lead, resulting in nothing but disasters only for the smart people in the room to ultimately prop him up and put him in power anyway.

That said, the political commentary is even more on the nose than usual. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s good to call a spade a spade, and especially in an election year, pointing out the oppressive tendencies that are the echoes of real life events makes some sense. On the other, at some point it starts to feel like set dressing and bluntness in lieu of actual incisive social commentary.

Still, there’s something to be said about the total loss. Homelander gets what he wants, and immediately uses the power to sic his superpowered thugs on the “undesirables” just like he always hoped. The Deep doesn’t care about actual respect or intelligence, just strong-arming people into offering it out of fear. The duly elected representatives are gone, and in their place is a puppet of malign forces. The good guys either get locked up or barely escape. For all the good, for all the hope, the forces of evil win out here.

Maybe you need evil to fight evil. For all the restraint and decency Hughie, Annie, M.M., Frenchie, Kimiko, Vicky, and more have shown, it leads them to being captured, coopted, killed, or sent on the run. The closing notes The Boys leaves us with in its fourth season (aside from a Soldier Boy tease) is one where the high-minded and hopeful crash into a wall of indifferent cruelty, exemplified by the man who used to be their leader.

Maybe Billy Butcher did die in that hospital bed, or at least the last decent part of him did. He tried to hold onto that part, for Becca, and for Ryan. But Becca is dead. Ryan is a killer who’d rather go back to his father. And little brother stand-in Hughie is now just standing in the way.

In his place is a tentacle monster with no pretense or remorse, ready to rip Supes in two without so much as a please or thank you. The closing image of “Assassination Run” is Butcher unleashed, gazing in the rearview mirror at his dark avatar, with no more compunction about trying to be good. After so much nudging our heroes toward the light, The Boys ends with the battle lost, the villains in power, and the sandpaper soul of Billy Butcher turned to brutality and maybe even genocide once again.

In a season batch of episodes that played at aspirations toward kindness, forgiveness, and growth, only to let them all crumple under the weight of cruelty and loss once more, this may be The Boys darkest ending and bleakest ending season yet.

[7.1/10] This was my least favorite entry in Tales of the Empire. How did Barriss Offee die? Well, she was randomly stabbed in a big metaphor-laden cave...I guess.

To be more charitable, she dies trying to stall an Inquisitor long enough for an innocent family trying to escape the Empire’s collection of force-sensitive children to get away. That part’s all good. The idea that she broke away from the Inquisitors and managed to become a healer and source of solace and protection on a distant world is cool. But this is an ending that left me unsatisfied with ehr story.

Again, I get it. The cave is a big metaphor! Bariss gives ominous warnings about fear having taken over for Lynn! Lytnn runs in more focused on random attacks and anger than on sense! Even though Bariss gets killed, she offers forgiveness and a warning that it’s not too late to change! I get it, it's just not done particularly artfully. The metaphor is heavy-handed, and Bariss doesn't feel like a real person; instead just a sermon delivery system.

The episode is not without its charms. The fight where Barriss simply dodges all of Lyn’s attacks is pretty cool, and I like the idea of Barriss having become a sort of monk in exile, helping those who come to her and sparing as many as she can. This is just an ignoble end that doesn't amount to much. Maybe we get some sort of redemption for Lyn down the line (I don’t know when this short is supposed to take place relative to Obi-Wan, but considering I’d forgotten who Lyn was when this little arc started, I can't say I’m super invested in that.

The hint that Barriss might still be in contact with Ahsoka (or maybe Cere Junda?) is a tantalizing one. I half expected us to get some kind of teaser at the end with Ahsoka receiving that family of fugitives. But instead, we get something that has spiritualism but not really substance. It’s a fine enough but disappointing end to what’s otherwise been a great set of vignettes.

[7.9/10] So I’m going to level with you here. I love Star Wars when it’s spiritual. I love Star Wars when it’s personal. I love Star Wars when it’s focused on epochal and individual events that reverberate over the course of generations. I love Star Wars when it asks big questions about what we are and what we choose to be.

But heaven help me, I also love Star Wars when it’s full of badass lightsaber fights.

There’s a lot of important events in “night”, the fifth episode of The Acolyte. We find out the identity of Mae’s master. Major characters die. There’s a big switcheroo. Mae and Osha communicate to one another for the first time in the series.

But the part I’m still buzzing on is the kickass fights we get throughout.

Suffice it to say, I know showing bad guys as uber-competent and cool can be problematic, but holy hell, watching Darth Dentum just casually slice and dice his way through the Jedi collective sent to subdue his pupil is awing. I don’t know if it’s quite to Vader hallway fight levels. But still, the way he short-circuits opponents’ lightsabers, the way he uses his vambrace and helmet to block fearsome attacks, the way he uses the Force to skewer two Jedi at the same time, is all badass as hell. Sometimes, villains need to be fearsome, and the quasi-Sith here fits the bill with the hack and slash routine alone.

But his isn’t the only fight with juice here! I love the stand-off between Mae and Jecki. It is not focused on lightsabers, but doesn’t lose any of the intensity. Mae’s resourcefulness matched with Jedcki’s determination to conduct the arrest in honor of her Order makes for a pitched battle between them. The way each uses their environment, and each has a more physical confrontation than the weapons-based combat outside works to add balance and variety to the pugilism in the episode.

Then, we get a standoff between Sol and the darksider. And while the other fights can thrive on craft and coolness alone,this one comes with more character and meaning. This is Osha’s master versus Mae’s master, a battle between the angel on one twin’s shoulder and the devil on the other’s. The standoff in the tree-lined clearing (cleared a little more with the bad guy’s blade) comes with the weight of a conflict between two philosophies. There’s still plenty of coolness in the choreography, with the Sith in particular having a certain balletic grace matched with a wilder style, but there’s also a deeper meaning to the fight.

Part of that comes from the bad guy getting his helmet slashed to reveal it’s Qimir behind the mask. I generally like that. As I mentioned in the last episode, it’s kind of close to the “Darth Jar Jar” theory the internet got hyped up for a while. The reveal that the seeming clown is secretly a machiavellian antagonist has power on its own, and the twist that Mae’s ostensible ally and confidante was also her master comes with a certain impact.

Manny Jacinto does a good job in the role. His line read of the purple prose at the end isn’t great, but as someone who knows him mainly as Jason Mandoza from The Good Place, he is unexpectedly convincing as a steady state badass feigning goofiness to catch his foes off-guard. The way he taunts and throws barbs at Sol in particular lands with a certain sting, and Jacinto sells it like gangbusters.

There’s also the fact that he freakin’ kills people, and not just the Star Wars equivalent of nameless redshirts! We’ve spent time with Yord and Jecki. We have a sense of who they are, and reason to care about them. So as much as it sucks to lose them (or at least lose Jecki, who gets a pre-mortem compliment from Qimir for her courage), the Jedi’s nemesis cutting them down is bracing and meaningful in a way that mowing down randos wouldn’t be. It adds to the list of people that Sol has to avenge.

Only, vengeance is not the Jedi way! What I love about Qimir’s attacks on Sol is that, true to the themes his character embodies, he uses the Jedi’s rules and precepts against them! His goal is to win, sure, but also to try to prove that the Jedi are hypocrites, that their rules are a limitation, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll break them anyway. So he baits Sol by holding Mae hostage and then tweaks him for attacking while his back is turned. He provokes an anger in the stoic Jedi Master that requires Osha to have to stop him from killing. He uses an unarmed state to check how committed Sol is to his principles given the blood on Qimir’s hands.

That is interesting! Frankly, it’s more of a Star Trek sort of thing than a Star Wars one. What do you do when the bad guy isn’t just testing your prowess in battle or the capabilities of your technology, but probing the fault lines of your moral code. I love that sort of thing.

I particularly appreciate Qimir’s pitch -- I just want to be left alone and be free to practice my ways and pass them down. It’s an interesting thought experiment for tolerance. Have the Jedi forged enemies like Qimir with an overly restrictive view of the Force, who may possess it, and how they may use it? Or are those kinds of structures necessary because people like Qimir would wield such powers recklessly and dangerously in ways that leave piles of dead bodies in their wake? In line with “Destiny”, there aren’t easy answers to those questions, and I like that.

Hell, the most powerful exchange in the episode comes when the good guys challenge Qimir for killing a young padawan, and the Sith responds with, “He brought her here.” Who do you blame the death on: the callous killer who claims he must slay anyone who knows his identity so he can practice his ways without being hunted down, or the ostensible noble master who nevertheless brings a veritable child into battle? Or do you blame both? Again, the moral gray area stuff is superb.

I like that split perspective in the confrontation between Mae and Osha as well. Both think the other has been brainwashed. Osha sees the person who killed her family, who always had a mean streak, taken under the tutelage of a false master. Mae sees someone who abandoned her family, who was compelled to give up the love and connection that the Coven represents, and wants to forgive and embrace her anyway. The dialogue is a little blunt, but true to that description, it hits hard.

The other material here is solid, if more mixed. The show set it up in the last episode, so I can't complain too hard, but Osha neutralizing Qimir, even temporarily, with the giant bugs plays as a little convenient in terms of holding off a powerful Sith. The pacing and editing here is a little off, with scenes that cut off at odd times, and several moments where the cinematography/score made me think we were about to let the credits roll, and instead things just kept on going. And the whole switcheroo seems a bit implausible, even if I’m still willing to go.

But this episode makes me think of Revenge of the Sith. Anakin famously declares, “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!” And it’s amusing, because it’s such a blunt and artless announcement of his perspective. But “Night” is that pronouncement taken seriously! Without defending the Sith exactly, the writers examine why someone might see the Jedi that way, even if they’re the bad guy. It brings a depth to the light/dark duality we haven't really seen on the screen before, and I am here for it.

Or I would be, if I weren’t too busy being distracted by the badass lightsaber fights.

[6.9/10] This was pretty easily my least favorite episode of The Acolyte so far, and a big part of my complaints is that the dialogue is painfully clunky here. This is Star Wars, so not every line has to be the most poetic or natural thing you’ve ever heard. But the conversations in this episode feel so stilted and declaratory. You have characters outright announcing their emotional states in a jarring way. The actors do their best to make up for it, and some of them manage to inject some emotion and feeling into otherwise tin-eared lines. (The actress who plays Jecki does a particularly good job of this.) But when the words being exchanged by the characters feel so awkward and obvious, and it’s a dialogue-heavy episode, you’re going to have problems.

The production design and location scouting helps make up for some of it though! My goodness, Khofar looks lovely. It’s easy to shoot lush verdant landscapes and wow the audience. But the art direction team also does a lovely job of making the planet seem like a deep, interwoven jungle that's alive and treacherous. (For those of you who’ve played Fallen Order it feels true to the Wookiee environment on Kashyyyk in that game.) Plus, Master Kalnacca’s camp seems incredibly cozy, with shades of the freakin’ Ewok films of all things. Even as the narrative presentation falters a little bit, this is a nice place to spend half an hour in, which helps.

That said, it’s not just the dialogue that suffers here; it’s the character choices. Mae and Osha’s reactions to one another seem sudden and jarring, to the point that I wondered if both were feints at first. I get that Oshi being alive would be a big deal for Mae, but all of a sudden she’s ready to give up her entire quest and turn herself into the Jedi and give up her master? It’s not inconceivable as a character choice, but I think you need more build to that notion to make it meaningful. Here I almost thought she was just messing with Qimir. All we;’ve gotten from Mae so far is this firm resolve and determination to complete her mission, so to turn on a dime like that feels implausible.

The same goes for Oshi asking the annoying prig Yord to kill her sister if she has to. I get the idea that Osha thinks she’s incapable of doing it and wants to make sure someone can handle it. But again, the conversation is awkwardly written, and going from “I can't hurt my sister” to “I want to make sure someone else can” feels like a big leap.

I do like that we get the awkward dynamic of Osha being on a Jedi mission as a civilian. Her status as an ex-Jedi with her former crew pays some dividends, and her budding friendship with Jecki is especially endearing. The theme of different cultures’ reactions to death and loss is a potent one. And on a pure fun level, Basil the tracker is a memorable design and addition.

That said, I’m less up on the partnership between Mae and Qimir. Not to belabor the point, but it’s where the dialogue is at its worst and most emotionally expository, which doesn’t help. But it also feels like the writers are tiptoeing around something in a graceless way that makes their interactions seem off. (Speculative spoilers:I’m sticking with my prediction that Mae’s master is one of her moms, but my backup guess is that it’s actually Qimir, and the show’s trying to pull a legit Darth Jar Jar by taking a jokey character and turning him into a secret menace. There’s at least something more going on with him, I think, and I’m not entirely sure what.)

Otherwise, I do appreciate that the awkward relationship between Osha and Sol continues. In a way, Sol is using her, while catching heat from his superiors. But he also doesn’t want Mae hurt. His intentions are good, even if his methods are questionable, which is a compelling way to write a parental figure.

Plus hey, halfway through the series, it’s about time we got a little more from our dark side force-wielder. So even if it’s just a tease, seeing Mae’s master show up, compel Osha as an adult much as the Jedi did when she was a kid, and then casually flick away Sol’s forces, gives the baddie a formidable introduction.

Overall, this is still the lowlight of the season to date, especially given the tepid lines that pervade it, but there’s some promise for things to come.

[7.0/10] This is another episode of The Boys where it feels like there’s ten million things going on. Let’s focus on the good stuff.

The dynamic between Homelander and Ryan continues to be one of my favorite parts of the season so far. Ryan is trying his best to do what’s expected of him, but doesn’t fit into his dad’s role or the life HOmeladner wants for him. Homerlander is ostensibly trying to build something for his son, but subconsciously worries about aging and being replaced. Given the trajectory of the show, and Homelander’s own weird quasi-oedipal fixations, you can see him turning on his son at some point out of a concern that Ryan will supplant him. Hence Homelander showing up to Ryan’s first save despite Sage telling him not to.

And poor Ryan! You feel for this kid, just going align with what everyone wants of him ,but feeling insecure and out of control. His tears over accidentally murdering the stuntman make you feel for this kid who’s being placed in a situation he doesn’t understand and isn’t suited for. And the writing and performance of Homelander continues to be outstanding, with him not even processing that Ryan’s upset about the death of someone Homelander considers a “toy”, but rather assuming he’s upset at Homelander stepping into his limelight.

I continue to like the business with Sage. She clearly has a bigger agenda at play, and knows exactly how to play people to achieve it. The Boys hasn’t always been perfect at paying these kind of grand schemes off, but for now, I’m happy to be along for the ride. Her rightly pointing out that Ryan needs to stand alone, turning Deep against Ashley, and stoking the conspiracy nuts all make you wonder what she’s getting at. Sometimes it’s more exciting to see the plates spin than it is satisfying to see the writers finally stack the dishes, but I still like the fact that she seems to have a bigger plan in play.

That said, I’m nonplussed by most of what happens at the ersatz QAnon festival. The cornpone Jubilee knockoff, Firecracker, and the perverted Multiple Man knockoff, Splinter, don’t do a lot for me. Taking aim at the tinfoil hat crowd is certainly topical, which is a good mode for The Boys, but there’s nothing particularly incisive about the parody or deep about the show’s observations on why people turn to that kind of conspiratorial nonsense.

I’m not made of stone. There’s fun to be had in the heroes and villains crashing a bat mitzvah and going to town with mid-fight photo booths, heavy metal horahs, and menorah-based stabbing. But the show has done this sort of thing so many times by season 4 that it loses much of the novelty. I will say, as a fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s amusing the see The Boys’ network stablemate get such an amusing shoutout here.

The material with the actual Boys leaves me mostly nonplussed. I’ll admit, I have some investment in Butcher trying to be honest for once, getting kicked out of the group, and still coming around to save his friends. The show gets at something real about the sad dynamic between him and MM, with the sense of Billy genuinely having made some changes but it being too late given all the shit that he’s put Marvin through. But it’s a little quick and given how much else is happening here, doesn’t get enough time to breathe.

It feels like Frenchie and Kimiko have already kind of reached the end of their arcs and now the show is grasping at straws for what to do with them. Kimiko struggling with her past and maybe going on a revenge spree plays like a rehash of what the show already did with her brother. And Frenchie’s new boyfriend turning out to be the child of a family he killed is a silly, soap opera-esque contrivance.

Speaking of which, I have real mixed feelings about the Hughie’s mom storyline. Jack Quaid does great work as a grown child struggling with the return of a parent who abandoned him. Hughie’s mom already has a certain presence to her, between the essential oils nonsense and the sort of passive aggressive, vaguely condescending school teacher tone she takes with Hughie. I’m compelled by their scenes together.

But the whole, “Your father’s been secretly talking to me for a couple of years and has granted me power of attorney” is another dumb soap opera-esque twist. I guess the show needs a reason why Hughie wouldn’t just kick her out, but it’s still awfully convenient. Maybe it’s all part of some Vaught plan to get to Hughie or something, but that would be even sillier.

I also don’t really care about Annie’s struggle with whether or not to be Starlight. As with Frenchie and Kimiko, it seems like we’ve kind of done her arc multiple times now, and the show’s running out of ideas for the character.

That said, strangely enough, one of the characters I’m most compelled by here is A-Train. The notion of his brother actually getting through to him, and him warning to do something genuinely heroic, is low-key inspiring. Him recognizing Hughie’s kindness in front of his family, and providing exonerating evidence for the men falsely accused of beating up Sage’s plants is one of the few genuinely good things we’ve seen him do. Nothing gold can stay in The Boys, but I’m intrigued by his change of heart.

Oh yeah, and seeing Will Ferrell play a Blind Side-esque mentor figure is worth a solid laugh, and so is the new Black Noir continually not really understanding his character.

Overall, I wish these episodes had more focus and momentum, and we’ve reached the point in the show where many of the character journeys seem to have reached their natural ends, only to continue on regardless. But there’s still some quality story threads to follow, particularly those on the supe side of the equation right now.

[7.7/10] I love me some gray areas in my Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the light side vs. dark side stuff. But as I’ve grown older, I appreciate stories, including Star Wars stories, that acknowledge our communities and our choices are rarely that simple.

So I like the fact that the Nightsisters (or at least some kind of presumably related witches’ coven) are presented as a counterpoint to the Jedi, not the villains of the piece. This flashback serves a number of purposes. It gives us some of that vaunted backstory, to help us understand where Osha and Mae and Sol and others are coming from. It fills in the gaps of the events that loom so large in the histories of our twin protagonists, letting the audience see them (or most of them) after being tantalized by only being told about them so far.

But most of all, it establishes a different, but no less valid alternative to the force-users we know. We’ve seen the Jedi. We’ve seen the Sith. We’ve seen the Nightsisters who, while sometimes sympathetic (hello Fallen Order fans!), also seem to be harnessing some kind of black magic. We’ve seen the Bendu, who’s more neutral than gray. And we’ve even seen the more passive and meditative Bardottans. (Aka, the species Jar Jar’s girlfriend is from -- no I’m not joking.)

But we’ve never seen anything quite like this coven led by Osha and Mae’s mother, Mother Aniseya. I love that they have a different take on the Force. The coven thinks the Jedi view the Force as a power to be wielded, whereas they view it more as a thread, a tapestry between peoples and events, that can be tugged and pulled to cause changes amid that weaving. Their perspective on the Force is a collectivist one, where their connection to it is given strength by the multitude, in contrast to the Jedi’s view on attachments. And they don’t view the Force as directing fate, but rather as providing for choices -- one of the core ideas of the franchise.

That is all neat! One of the best parts of The Last Jedi is the notion that the Force does not belong to the Jedi. It is, instead, something that flows through all peoples. Exploring that there may be different religions out there, different means of reaching and interpreting it, adds depth ot he world and adds complication to the binary. It’s nearly never a bad thing to add that kind of complexity and ecumenical spirit to your universe.

More or less. One of the other things I appreciate is that the Coven and the jedi view one another with suspicion, even though they’re mutually respectful at first. The coven sees the Jedi as arrogant, too focused on power, too individualistic. The Jedi view the Coven as dark, as corrupting, as dangerous. I’m always a fan of shows that don’t present one perspective, but rather explore how the different vantage points affect the different views groups may have of one another. (Shades of Deep Space Nine from the other major star-bound franchise!)

This is all to say that the Coven is different than what we’re used to, but no less valid. The Jedi as we see them here are different than what we’re used to, but not invalid. And their twin approaches, alike in dignity, come through in the fulcrum between the Coven and the Order: Mea and Osha.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room with those two. The young actress (actresses?) who play the earlier version of the twins aren’t very good. That's no sin. Giving a convincing performance as an adult with years of experience remains startlingly difficult. But the reality is that, though these young actors are giving it their all, there is a put on, stagey quality to the performance that can take you out of the moment. I dearly hope the fandom is kind to them nonetheless. It’s tough being a young performer, especially in a high profile role. But despite a nice moment from Osha when she realizes the gravity of what she’s lost, a lot of the acting from the kiddos is apt to take the viewer out of the moment.

Thankfully, the writing helps make up for it. Not for nothing, given Lucasfilm’s current ownership, much of this feels like the first act of a film from the Disney Renaissance. Osha could be your classic Disney princess. She loves her family and wants to do good and be righteous, but she has this yearning for something different, beyond the garden gate. The episode lays it on a little thick in places, but it’s a venerable story beat for a reason. There’s something compelling about someone trying to make the best of a family situation that doesn’t quite fit them but yearning adventure out past the horizon. (I mean, hey, it worked for Luke Sykwalker.) Osha is roughly one “I want” song from joining the little mermaid and company.

What I like about it, though, is that you feel for all sides of this situation. You feel for Osha. She wants to have an existence separate from her twin. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with the Coven. She doesn’t want to disappoint her moms or her sister. But she doesn’t want to lie. She doesn’t want to deny herself. She doesn’t want to give up this thing inside her telling her she wants more, or at least different.

You feel for Mae. She admittedly, has signs of being the “evil” twin. (Though I guess they both seem to use their force powers to freeze that translucent butterfly? I’ll admit, it was confusing who was who there at points.) She feels at home in the Coven. She loves the immediate family and the wider one. She has power and ease, and the confidence that comes from feeling that you’re where you ought to be. In the end, she does a terrible thing, but she’s an eight-year-old lashing out at an unfortunate situation. In the larger than life confines of fiction, it’s an easy thing for me to forgive.

You feel for Mother Aniseya. She is trying to protect her people. She wants to raise her daughters in her own proud tradition. But she also wants them to find their own path to it. But, from the vantage point of being a little older and a little wiser, she knows that what you want can change. What makes sense in the exuberance of youth can fall out of favor when it makes contact with the knots and tangles of that great ethereal thread. Wanting to protect your child, to instill your values in theme, while respecting their autonomy as young people is an impossible balance. Aniseya handles it with understanding and grace.

Heck, you even understand Mother Koril, who is the more strict and belligerent parental figure here. The cultural conditions are mostly implied, but it’s easy to intuit how the Coven has been marginalized, diminished, possibly by Force. The girls represent their future, and it seems to have required a great deal of her and her partner to make that happen. Why wouldn’t she do anything to protect her girls, and mistrust the Jedi who would deign to take their future away from her and her family?

And you also feel for Sol. The Acolyte already conveyed a very fatherly vibe between him and Osha,but this episode cements it. I have my qualms about what happens to the young woman, but Sol seems searnest when he tells her that she could be a great Jedi, when he imparts that courage means pursuing honestly what you want, when he embraces her in the throes of tragedy and wants to take her on as a surrogate child. The estranged relationship between them in the present is counterbalanced by this fraught but touching connection between them in the past.

Of course, that past is no less slippery. For one thing, there’s still much that's alluded to that we don’t quite see. Presumably there was some conflict between the Jedi and the Coven that Osha wasn’t privy to, which we’ll see down the line. Presumably, it’s part of what spurred Mae to take the actions she did. Presumably it’s why there’s great regret among the Jedi who survived the encounter. And that's before you get into the fact that apparently Mother Aniseya channeled some forbidden magic, or at least did something controversial, to bring the twins’ lives into being. There’s plenty of lore and intrigue yet.

But for now, at least, we have two cultures at odds with one another, in ways that question and complicate our sympathies. This is Star Wars. We know who the Jedi are. We’re apt to side with them, to see them as Osha does, as peacekeepers and heroes of the galaxy. (Even if we’ve seen their ossification and dissolution over the course of the Prequels.) When Osha wants to be a Jedi, and her witch family tells her to lie, to deny herself what she wants in the same of something she’s uncertain about, it’s easy to see Indara and company as rescuers.

And yet, it’s also hard not to see this different means of reaching the Force, that is apparently all but outlawed, and not have serious qualms about the equivalent of religious persecution. The notion that the Coven is allowed to exist, but forbidden from passing on their knowledge to children is startling. It’s clear that there remains animosity between the Coven and the Jedi, born of mutual mistrust, with ostensible peacemakers and instigators. And it’s hard to think of Republic law allowing the Jedi to test and, with some permission, take children away to be taught in their fashion, without thinking of real life colonial schools, and so-called “residential schools” in the United States, that have a checkered history at best.

So while the show makes things a little too blunt with Mae and Osha standing across from one another on a broken bridge, you get the reasons behind the actions and anguish between these two young girls, between their various parents, between Jedi and the Coven. This is not black and white, good and evil, light and dark. This is something more muddled and uncertain than that. And it portends deeper and more interesting things as the mythos of Star Wars evolves before our eyes.

(Speculative spoilers: My bet is that Mae’s master is one of her moms, probably Mother Koril. THough I guess it being the comparatively peaceful and forgiving Aniseya would be a bigger twist. The law of conservation of characters suggests it’s one of them, unless it’s secretly Master Vernestra or something. But one of the moms would be the bigger emotional gut punch, so I presume and hope it’s one of them.)

[7.7/10] Let’s start with the superficial and work our way to the substantive.

There is something inherently cool about a Jedi Master who has taken such a vow, showed such discipline, reached some level of enlightenment to where they can basically levitate in place,n protected by a seemingly impenetrable force bubble, that can withstand even the most fervent attacks. We’re only two episodes in but what I like about the Acolyte is that it’s already expanding what we think and know of the Jedi. Using the HIgh Republic era as a playground for new and unique uses of the Force, that pose different challenges for even a trained assassin like Mae, helps make the Jedi feel amazing again, rather than rote and known.

The same goes for Sol’s fight with Mae on Olega. Maybe I will get tired of the wire fu approach at some point, but for now, it remains a thrill. Watching Mae fight with all her might, while Master Sol displays an economy of movement akin to master Indara from the last episode, remains incredibly cool. The nigh-literal dust-up between them, with furious attacks and calm blocks, again displays the differences in disposition between studied master and hungry student.

What I appreciate, though, is that neither of these exist just for the sake of coolness or sheer thrills. (Which, if I’m being pointed, is a criticism that can be leveled at J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars films, even the parts I like.)

Master Torbin’s force bubble isn’t just a unique obstacle for Mae. It means she has to find a way to get to her target beyond the sheer force that is already her calling card. The fact that she doesn't kill Torbin, but rather provides him poison to kill himself and end his guilt over what happened on Brendok is a piercing, fascinating choice. The moment where she offers him an exit, and after so much stillness and silence, he descends to accept this offering, feels monumental. And his uttering one more apology before drinking the poison sells the magnitude of what must have happened in mae’s past tremendously.

Credit to the writers. I can get really tired of mystery boxes in genre fix. (Thanks again, J.J.!) But in moments like this one, where characters’ choices are informed by a past we’re not fully privy to yet, the magnitude of those choices makes us care about and anticipate the reveal of Mae and the Jedi’s history without needing to know it right now. As someone who came of age during the Prequel movies, it’s easy to see the Jedi as a flawed institution. But meeting four Jedi who were a party to whatever happened ito Mae and Osha, and who are all clearly haunted by it, to where someone like Torbin would go to these extremes, gives you a sense of how significant that event must be, and why Mae must be so desperate for revenge.

That ties into her fight with master Sol. He’s less interested in defeating her than disarming her, both mentally and physically. From a sheer plot standpoint, the fact that even Mae doesn't know the identity of her master is an interesting little twist. But more to the point, Sol trying to get through to Mae, to help her move past what happened, gives their fight more meaning than even the most thrilling of fisticuffs could.

I also appreciate how Master Sol is in the middle of two extremes here. On the one hand, he seems frustrated by the Jedi strictures and bureaucracy. He bristles at Master Vernestra telling him the Jedi must convene a committee before he can follow-up on Mae’s fugitive run. He rejects Yord’s warning that sending Osha in to deceive the apothecary would violate various precepts. He seems annoyed at best at how Jedi practice doesn't always align with real lif needs.

But at the same time, he tells Osha to let go of her grief, of her attachments in the past, in a way that seems as though he’s telling her not to be human. On the one hand, you can sympathize. He sees how these complicated feelings about what happened have harmed both Osha and Mae, and wants to offer a method to attain peace with them. On the other hand, he still seems haunted by them, as do his colleagues. So it’s rousing when Osha basically tells him, You're not my master anymore; you don’t get to tell me what to do .”

I’m surprisingly receptive to notions that, as cool as the Jedi are, they are a terribly flawed body. (see also: their morally questionable use of invasive mind control tricks, including on Mae.) The idea that they made a grand error on Brendok, covered it up or minimized it, and are facing the choes of it in Mae and Osha is a resonant throughline.

I also appreciate how we have some structure here. Mae has a Kill BIll-esque list of the Jedi she wants revenge on. She has a particular challenge -- to defeat one without using a weapon -- that puts her at an additional disadvantage but gives her a cause and an objective. And the way these aren't random targets, but rather people she feels have wronged her adds extra juice to the proceedings.

So do the side characters. I kind of enjoy how much of a dick Yord is, but I also appreciate that he’s not actively evil or anything, to where he stands up for Osh when she’s accused of murdering Torbin. I’m increasingly entertained by Jecki, her willingness to call Yord’s plan stupid, and her cleverness in coming up with a much better and more effective one. And as a Good Place fan, it’s nice to see Manny Jacinto as Qimir, a feckless apothecary aligned with Mae who feels appropriately rough around the edges.

This is also a good episode for Mae. It’s not easy for her to be around Sol again, or to have him judge the life she’s made for herself since leaving the order. The tender and fraught rekindling of their partnership is one of the best things about the show so far. It adds a certain charge and sadness to every scene where they’re together.

Likewise, it’s nice to see Osha and Mae confront one another, after each believed the other was dead. (And, not for nothing, it neutralizes my theory that maybe Mae is the dark side taking over Osha’s subconscious or something.) The fact that after everything each has been through, the connection shared and lost, Osha ultimately provides for Mae’s escape rather than bringing her in, portends more interesting things to come.

Overall, once again, The Acolyte blends compelling intrigue, exciting action, and meaningful character work to produce another pleasing episode of television.

[7.5/10] I feel like there are two modes of Discovery: one where it aims to take a page out of classic Trek focused on problem-solving and geopolitics, and one where it aims to be a modern serialized drama with major turns and intense character beats.

In its final season, the show’s gotten pretty good at the former! “Eirgah” is, in many ways, all about finding unorthodox diplomatic solutions, understanding what even an alien enemy truly wants, using your resources -- not just technology, but people -- to reach a solution. And when it’s in that mode, it’s pretty darn good!

Sadly, even after five years of trying, it’s still not especially good at the latter. The ongoing race to find the Progenitors' technology is a yawn wrapped in dynamite. The breathless character relationships between Moll, L'ak, and Book are roundly uninvolving. And the attempts to turn every week into a high-stakes action movie rather than a measured, if heightened set of interactions between different peoples, continues to be unavailing.

Which is all to say that I love the initial diplomatic negotiations and internal considerations regarding the incoming Breen. On a basic narrative level, there are solid stakes. The Federation has L'ak. The Breen want him. L'ak’s people are known more for their reflexive decimation than their considered diplomacy, something multiple conversations remind us of. (Hello Deep Space Nine fans!) How to navigate the situation on that basis alone is tricky, which portends good things.

And then you have the pragmatic, the ethical, and the threat of apocalypse to manage. On a practical basis, L'ak might have important information Starfleet can use in the hunt for the Progenitor tech, and they certainly don’t want to hand a roadmap toward that kind of power over to the Breen. On a moral level, it’s against Federation principles to hand over someone to die, especially when they know L'ak wants nothing more to do with his people. And lurking in the background is the sight Burnham and Rayner had during the time travel adventures, of a Federation HQ destroyed by the Breen, laying out what could go wrong if this all, well, goes wrong.

What results is a tug of war. Do we attempt a peaceful solution here, as a pinch-hitting President T’Rina seems to suggest. Or do we bear down for battle because the Breen are brutes who can't be trusted, as Rayner suggests? And given the ticking clock and high stakes, can Burnham get the info she needs to help both the engagement with the Breen and the search for the Progenitor tech in time?

That's a great setup. It lays out dimensions of the problem that are practical, moral, and personal. It gives you a, dare I say, Deep Space Nine-esque quandary of whether to do the noble thing or the expedient thing with a serious threat hanging over your head. And it all requires reckoning with your own prejudices and principles to find a path forward. That is classic Trek.

I’ll admit, as much as I’ve loved Commander Rayner as an addition to Discovery, I have my qualms with the “Behind every bigot there’s a story of understandable trauma.” His xenophobic reaction to the prospect of dealing with the Breen is rightfully galling to T’Rina. But I do appreciate, from a storytelling perspective, that his skepticism is more than just garden variety prejudice. The idea that his people were brutally wiped out by the Breen, hence his prejudice against them, adds dimension to his sentiments. Rayner not letting those feelings, that hurt, get the best of him, and finding ways to contribute positively to the plan, are another sign of his growth.

Not for nothing, this may also be one of Michael Burnham’s finest hours, especially as a leader. As with “Face the Strange”, it’s her empathy and understanding that pay dividends here.

She doesn’t write off Rayner’s prejudices, instead speaking with him about his Breen experiences in a way that not only gives them the tools to better understand what these erstwhile aggressors want, but also brings Rayner back into the fold. And while her conversation with Moll and L'ak results in her nigh-magically divining what their deal is without them saying much, I’m willing to chalk it up to Michael being perceptive, and a commendable desire to gather as much info as possible before marching into a scary situation. That is real Starfleet stuff.

So is the payoff with the Breen. They are as brutish, intimidating, and curt as advertised. Their unreceptiveness to our heroes’ entreaties makes it that much more impressive when the good guys unleash their savvy. Understanding what L'ak means to Primarch Ruhn, as a bargaining chip in a political contest, and using what Rayner knows about a rival contender for the throne, gives the good guys the knowledge to bluff Ruhn and play his rivals against him to not only maintain the status quo, but earn a peaceful resolution to the crisis du jour. Again, classic Starfleet.

And if things had ended there, I think I would have been happy. Is the story a bit simple? Sure. But it requires both guile and understanding from all involved to pull off, the kind of careful navigation of interpersonal and geopolitical minefields that were the bread and butter of the Star Trek I grew up with.

Instead, from there, we dive first into wild turn and crazy fight land, which is the mode of Discovery I’ve grown the most exhausted with.

Thankfully, along the way, we get some interesting reflections of the same kind of lateral thinking and recognition of the value of friends and allies that Burnham models here. Tilly and Adira work to figure out what the inscription on the Betazoid scientist’s clue means, while Stamets teams up with Book to figure out what the composition of the metal base points to.

Both are nice little subplots. It’s a treat to see Tilly and Adira problem-solving together, with Tilly’s attaboy for Adira’s growing composure and confidence being particularly heartwarming. The fact that they have to go to Jet Reno to piece together clues toward an ancient library is a good excuse to enjoy some of Tig Notaro’s distinct energy, and to tantalize us with the prospect of a sci-fi Library of Alexandria that might hold the key to the next destination. (Hello Avatar: The Last Airbender fans!)

On the Stamets side of things, we get more hints that Stamets is putting incredible stock into “the mission” despite the threat of destruction, because he remains motivated to cement his legacy apart from the spore drive. His devotion and low-key desperation shine through, and his recognition that an empath like Book might be useful in decoding a clue left by a member of an empathic species is a nice way to show his own type of lateral thinking and put Book to good use.

The way the two halves come together, with Team Tilly’s discovery of the library which might be the source of the inscription, and Team Stamets coming up with its possible locations, until they harmonize their findings to point the way, is more classic Trek problem solving. As mystery box stories go, this is the step that feels the most earned and true to the show’s roots. It requires teamwork, intelligence, and creative thinking. What more can you ask for?

For the episode to end there, I guess.

Look, here’s the big problem -- I just don’t buy the Moll and L’ak corner of the show. Moll and L’ok having some timeless, unbreakable connection to one another? I don’t buy it. Book feeling like Moll is his last bit of family? I don’t buy it. Eve Harlow’s affected acting through of this? I don’t buy it.

It’s not like Discovery hasn’t tried to do the work here. We had a Moll/L’ak backstory episode. We’ve had plenty of scenes where Book tries to explain his connection to and feelings about Moll. It’s just that none of it’s been convincing. SO when you have the two smugglers blowing this whole thing up so they can be together, or Moll basically defecting to the Breen so that she can use the Progenitor tech to bring back L’ak from the dead, it’s not like I don’t believe it, but I don’t really care. It’s not piercing or convincing enough to warrant my emotional investment. Instead, these theoretically gigantic moments become instances of, “Well, this is happening, I guess.”

And of course, we depart from the classic Trekkian diplomacy and problem-solving to have a series of the same choppily-edited, mushy fist fights we’ve seen time and time again in Discovery. I don’t need to see Moll punching out Hugh, or getting into gun battles with Commander Nhan, where the show tries to spruce up a pretty dully-directed hour with some strange overhead shots. The combat has lost all impact given how often they go to that well.

Instead, we’re in overhyped melodrama land, where characters make emotional decisions founded on sentiments the show hasn’t really earned, with wild swings in fortune that require extended boardroom conversations to half-justify. Risking the Breen getting the Progenitor tech may make the season’s endgame more exciting, but it seems like a pretty foolish choice given what’s at stake.

That's the problem. Once Discovery is out of its “Let’s solve the problem du jour” mode, that allows it to follow the rhythm of old, it loses its spark. Once we’re back to trying to make hay out of uninteresting and unconvincing new characters, and feed the show’s overblown blockbuster season arc, the whole thing falls apart.

The most frustrating episodes of Discovery aren’t the installments that are outright bad. They’re the ones where you see the show’s potential, but that potential runs aground when the series falls back into its old habits.

[7.1/10] So here’s the problem -- I don’t really care about Pabu. That's not necessarily The Bad Batch’s fault. I think the show has dutifully established what this town means to Omega, Hunter, and Wrecker, and what it represents for them as a safe haven. But the other side of the coin is that, given the passage of time between seasons, I’m not sure I could name a single one of the characters who resides there, or recall what exactly their significance is to our heroes. (I vaguely remember Omega being friends with Lyana and Wrecker having a moment of camaraderie with Mayor Shep, but that's about it.) That means it’s more of a generic setting than an important place to me as a viewer. So for me at least, the idea of “Pabu is home” works in theory, but not really in practice, lacking the impact that, say, watching the Empire destroy the Marauder has.

Which is all to say that I get what The Bad Batch is going for here. The Shadow Agent has arrived! He’s brought Stormtroopers to their safe and sacred place! They’re hurting innocent people! Omega has no choice but to go with them to stop the suffering!

But it doesn’t really land for me emotionally. Some of it’s just that the pacing of this one is all over the place There’s a long slow build, and even once the Empire arrives, it’s a bunch of muddy and indifferent action, without much to latch onto as a viewer. I can, in principle, appreciate Wrecker getting incapacitated in the explosion, Hunter getting sidelined trying to grab a transport, and the locals seeing their livelihood destroyed. But without a more personal connection, much of this feels like standard piece-moving and table-setting for the final stretch of the series. I understand why the show needs to do these things, and the violation it’s supposed to feel like, but the stakes don’t really land and neither do the emotions.

There’s a few points worth noting. For one, the fact that the Shadow Agent is able to snipe a stormtrooper from seemingly miles way strongly suggests he’s a clone of Crosshair, which portends interesting things. While I can see the seams a little too plainly, the best thing this episode does to establish Pabu as important is making it the home for Tech’s glasses and Omega/Wrecker’s plush, sacred objects in The Bad Batch’s corner of the universe.

Most of all, I appreciate that on Omega’s journey to maturity, she is now willing to give herself up, put herself in harm’s way, both to save the villagers of Pabu, but also in a bid to rescue the clones who are still trapped on Tantiss. There is a selflessness, a courage, a righteousness to Omega that bears out. The interplay between ehr perspective and Crosshair’s this season ahs been a particular highlight. The way he tells her this isn’t a viable plan, and she responds “It’s all we have” shows not only how Omega’s grown, not only the bravery she displays on a daily basis, but the sense of self-sacrifice she’s picked up from Tech.

The most tension “The Point of No Return” can offer comes in the plan to track Omega’s jaunt to Tantiss. Her giving up her comms to the Shadow Agent as a feint, only for Crosshair’s secondary tracker to miss comes freighted with expectation and disappointment. And Omega’s sigh when she’s on the Shadow Agent’s transport, suggests there’s another layer to the plan, but also perhaps just a sense of exhaustion, of resolve, of that franchise trademark hope within the young clone heading back to the site of her captivity.

I can't say I loved this one. It strikes me as a more functional episode than a purely riveting one. But it does leave me impressed with the show’s main character, and excited to see what happens next, so it must be doing something right.

[7.4/10] The knock on Voyager is that it is slavishly devoted to the reset button. By this point, savvy viewers can probably guess that the ship won’t make it home before the end of the series, if ever. Likewise, they can probably surmise that despite the grievous threat of the week, the ship will probably be fine and all of the main characters will probably survive. Maybe, in the final season, they’ll let a couple get married and even have a bun in the oven, but despite the endless possibilities of the premise, things mostly stay the same on Janeway’s ship.

Yet, if the setting is static, and the basic situation can't change, then the only thing that’s left to develop over time is the characters. Voyager is not exactly its sister show, Deep Space Nine, when it comes to character arcs, but there’s something there! The Captain loosens up a bit and becomes more daring and less doctrinaire. B’Elanna and Tom go from a hothead and a bad boy to a loving bastion of domesticity. Neelix goes from being an irksome tagalong to being a helpful ambassador and the heart of the crew. Even Harry the eternal ensign gets a little extra spunk and ambition over the years.

But the peak of change over time goes to the show’s two biggest outsiders to humanity: The Doctor and Seven. Doc has had a longer runway, but Voyager’s creative team is more devoted to Seven as a major player, charting her course over time and putting her at the center of the show’s bigger narratives. Her path from recovered drone who yearns to return to the Collective, to a critical member of the crew and vital part of its community, is one of the show’s best achievements.

Which is what gives an episode like “Human Error” power. For so long, we have seen Seven be a reluctant explorer of her own humanity. She slowly gives in to connection and acceptance and the sundry parts of being a n individual. But she holds on to her stoicism, her sense of order, her desire for perfection. The breakthroughs are meaningful because they don’t happen overnight. The show spoon-feeds them to it, a little at a time, with the scattered big moment to show how far she comes.

And then an episode like “Human error” comes along and we see something totally different, something that reflects how her perspective has changed in nearly four years board Voyager. Because now Seven is no longer a Borg drone who resents having to conform to Janeway’s “irrelevant” human mores. She’s an aspiring human who wishes she could jettison her Borg implants and yearns for the ease of manner and human connection she once had to be cajoled into even considering.

I love that idea. There is great pathos in Seven resenting the artifacts of her one time captivity. There is something relatable in her literally and figuratively aching for a bond with others that she struggles to make real. Seven is no longer a Borg forced into individuality, but an individual striving to shed the parts of her that are Borg.

And she does it through erotic friend fiction.

I’m being a little glib there. Anyone who’s practiced a conversation in their head ahead of time, or pictured what they might do or say as their best selves at a social event can relate to Seven using the holodeck to conjure up a version of Voyager where she’s Borg implant-free and able to express herself as easily as she’d like to. The way she programs her appearance without any sign of her Borg past, and scenarios where she feels comfortable thanking the captain for her guidance or coming up with sincere-yet-ribbing toasts for B’Elanna’s baby shower is sympathetic.

Who among us hasn’t wanted to step into a world where we looked the way we wanted, and felt confident and charming enough to fit in perfectly in any social situation? It’s a beautiful thing, and the contrast between stoic, self-conscious Seven in the real world and charismatic, confident Seven in her imaginary one calls to mind a similar dichotomy with Lt. Barclay in season 6’s [“Pathfinder”] and TNG’s “Hollow Pursuits”. Shaky crewmembers using the holodeck as a safe space to try escape and try on different personas is well-established territory.

Where I struggle, naturally, is the romance element of it.

On the one hand, I like the idea here. Speaking of showing change over time through the characters, as much as “Unimatrix Zero” fell flat for me, I like the notion that, even though Seven’s heretofore unknown relationship with Axum felt random in the moment, it sparked something in her. She wanted that feeling, that sense of connection, once more, and has been chasing it ever since.

I tend to think of love -- romantic, platonic, or familial -- as an essential part of being human. It’s natural and understandable that once Seven began to accept her humanity, she would yearn for it, and maybe even have a sort of strange approximation of it at first. Seeing her take those first baby steps, play pretend to try the idea on for size, is fascinating from a sociological angle, and sympathetic from a personal one.

On the other, though -- why Chakotay? I’ve said my piece on the character before, so I won’t keep beating a dead targ. But geeze, at this point the only female main character who hasn’t nursed a crush on Chakotay is Kes (and hell, maybe she just ran out of time). To paraphrase 10 Things I Hate About You, “What is it with this guy? Does he have beer-flavored nipples?” Voyager tries to make him a romantic lead again, and again and again, and it just. never. works. Maybe I’m just the wrong audience for it.

The show uses every tool in its cinematic tool box to try to evoke a sense of passion between his holographic counterpart and Seven. They’re blocked close together with the usual “flirt around the kitchen” routine. The film shoots them in close-ups and low lighting, setting a mood and a sense of intimacy. And the score here really sells the relationship, from the way the music recedes after their first tenuous kiss only to swell back with a vengeance once they go for it again with more certainty. I can't deny there’s a certain charged energy between them in the right moments.

But for the most part, it feels like a crack ship between one of Voyager’s most interesting characters and its resident dead fish. “Human Error” raises interesting ideas about Seven struggling to sacrifice her perfection and order in the name of human improvisation and connection. But they’re undermined by Robert Beltran giving facile speeches that overly underline the point in an unconvincingly shout-y tone.

In principle, I can understand why, in a vacuum, Seven would look to a noble authority figure like Chakotay as an idealized romantic partner. But I never really buy this hinky pairing, which is tough since it takes up most of the episode.

But even if the chemistry could paper over those issues, there is something quietly creepy about Seven conjuring up a version of one of her colleagues to kiss and flirt with and be implied to sleep with. The episode never quite explores that, treating it as harmless fantasy, and I get why. You can understand the impulse, especially for a character who reads as having a teenage mentality much of the time. (Her conversation with Janeway has a real “Mom almost found the diary where I fantasize about the boys I like” quality to it.)

Still, as with Leah Brahms in TNG’s “Galaxy’s Chikd”, there is something uncomfortable about taking a real person and putting them in your romance sim. The episode tees up Seven’s awkwardness over being discovered, but never really the ethics of her actions.

Admittedly, the episode isn’t really about that. It’s more about that nascent desire to explore in Seven and, more to the point, how these daydreams and “experiments” take her away from her usual steady performance of her duties. Voyager flying through an interstellar munitions range is mostly a perfunctory hurdle in a more character-focused episode. But it provides just enough risk and danger for Seven to need to tear herself away from her fantasies, nearly let her colleagues down because of her new fascinations, and ultimately decide to put her heart back into it.

There’s something softly tragic about that. The idea that Seven’s cortical implant specifically prevents her from being able to experience human emotion, lest her body be shut down by it, is a little too mechanical an excuse for what should be a personal issue to resolve. But her skipping regeneration sessions because she’s trying to be more human, only to reflexively return to them because she’s seen the impact love has on her work and self and would rather retreat to the comforts of what she knows is heartbreaking.

As heartening and interesting as it is to see Seven try to stretch her wings and become more human -- with her hair, her friends, her personal life -- it’s just as tragic to see her decide to clip them because it’s all too hard.

It puts her in line with another of the franchise’s great outsiders, Odo from Deep Space Nine, who similarly closed himself off from romance in the name of it being too difficult and too painful in “Crossfire”. “Human Error” doesn’t quite hit those heights. It’s slower, clumsier, less convincing in its central romance. But its heart is in the same place, and so is its heartbreak.

As much as I enjoy the way a great television show develops a character over time, I love it even more when the character’s arc is not a straight line. Life is messy. We rarely progress neatly from one piece of who we are to another. Acknowledging that, letting the internal path from here to there be an elliptical and uncertain one, is part of what elevates great series like Better Call Saul from their simpler brethren.

But sometimes it's painful. Seven changes, but not quite enough, or maybe too much, until she tries to go back to who she was before. The episode’s final moments suggest the attempted reversion might not fully take. Even so, there’s a way to make dramatic, character-focused hay from the enforced stasis of this era of network television. Make the return to the status quo a tragedy. Seeing Seven come so close, grab a piece of the humanity she wants in heart of hearts, only to let it go when it’s too hard to hold onto, is sad in the way it shows how far she’s come, and how far she still has left to go.

[7.7/10] Sometimes all it takes is the tug of a thread. A raving Vulcan gives a former Borg a brief glimpse of her old life. A young doctor starts to notice that a rare condition has been diagnosed twice in quick succession and realizes his patient might be right.. A brainwashed woman gets dribs and drabs of the life she made with her husband. An investigator begins to wonder if his raving suspect has a point. And a familiar fugitive tells a happy worker that she was, and still could be, the captain of a starship.

There is a lot going on in the second half of the “Workforce” duology. Too much, arguably. But if there’s something that unites the disparate odds and ends that coalesce into the payoff to this story, it’s that simple motif. Almost nothing here happens in one great epiphany. Instead, it’s a slow trickle, a steady realization, that at first seems small, but eventually can't be ignored.

It’s a nice idea to build the episode around. As is often the case of Star Trek, the ending isn’t quite as good as the beginning. It’s easier to spin mystery and intrigue than it is to come up with a satisfying conclusion. And “Workforce pt. 2” is certainly plottier than the first part was. More of the story is built around characters actively uncovering the mystery and building towards their escape as opposed to quieter character moments to reflect or just appreciate the texture.

Nonetheless, it’s a nice way to land the story. Everyone has something to do, and you can see this constellation of lives, spread out by malign forces, inextricably returning to the fold because they can't deny their connections to one another or their shared purpose. It nags at them, brings them home, in the same way the drive to return to the Alpha Quadrant does. And that's something.

Heck, we even get a solid, if somewhat underfed, conclusion to the Doctor and Harry jockeying for position aboard Voyager. The storytelling is slight, but you can see a skeptical Harry recognize the Doctor’s tactical prowess in a tough spot, and in turn, the ECH (née EMH) recognizes Harry’s ability to come up with new innovative strategies that aren’t in the database.

I wish the episode took more time to explore Doc’s desire to stay a command hologram. In an episode where no one can deny the impulse to return to their former existence, there’s thematic weight in someone who wants the exact opposite as a counterpoint. But in a crowded episode, there’s just no time.

Still, what we do get is sound and compelling. I appreciate the fact that not all of Quarran society is corrupt. The reveal here is that the physician who brainwashed our heroes is in league with the head of the power plant that employs them. That alone would be diabolical, removing people’s free will for a fee. But the idea that the government, the health ministry, and the police are all on it, gladly willing to kidnap and enslave if it means a functioning society, only makes it worse.

The senior doctor, Kadan’s, self-justifying speech is fascinating. If you set aside your good sense for a moment, you can see his argument. There’s something superficially compelling to his idea of a symbiotic relationship, where a society in need of labor to stay afloat finds it in people who are made happy and fulfilled by doing it. And then when you think about the overriding of people’s agency and the perverse incentives from Kadan’s compensation, the whole thing falls apart.

(To the point, I wonder if this episode is intended as an allegory for the abuses that come with migrant labor. The whole brainwashing deal makes the whole thing a little too fantastical to be a one-to-one comparison, but the idea of sacrificing human rights in the name of labor shortages resonates with the real life issues.)

But I also like that Kadan and the foreman and their governmental enablers don’t represent everyone. The young physician is rightfully aghast when he finds out what happens, despite relatable pressures put pon him by a superior. You have people steadily realizing the horrors that are being inflicted in the name of their people and acting to expose or stop it.

None more so than Yerid, the police detective sent to investigate B’Elanna’s disappearance who instead uncovers this giant conspiracy. If there’s a sense in which the second half of “Workforce” feels disconnected from the first, it’s the way we just get brand new characters who have to be developed and built into major players who weren’t really present in part one. (Plus Tom’s boss just disappears! No budget, I guess.) The results are a little rushed.

But they’re also good. I like that, at the end of the day, an ailing Chakotay puts a bug in Yerid’s ear. He starts recognizing the peculiarity of the orders to transfer Chakotay to the neuropsychology wing of the general hospital. He starts asking questions, impertinent ones, that get at the truth. And eventually, he becomes an ally to our heroes, helping them not only get to the bottom of what happened but also undo it.

It’s a recurring idea. Seven gets a simple flash of her time as a drone and starts to get the itch to uncover the truth. Suddenly she too is an enterprising gumshoe, sneaking in places and putting the pieces together. Tom starts to countenance small bits of whom he might be. B’Elanna immerses herself in her and Tom’s quarters and even his logs, until she becomes a walking reminder to Janeway that there’s something else out there waiting for the once-and-future captain.

The truth is that these scenes don’t have much time to breathe. There is a lot of plot to get through in forty-five minutes, which means that “Workforce” always moves at a good clip, but there’s rarely time to stop and smell the roses. And yet a few smaller scenes -- B’Elanna touching the bat’leth she hung on the wall in “Prophecy”, Seven finding someone who believes her, Janeway’s change in expression when she hears Chakotay call her “the captain” -- self the more personal dimension of these events.

That comes through most clearly in Kathryn’s story. “Workforce” is, in many ways, a referendum on the Captain’s life. And in the end, no matter what simple pleasures a quiet life as a core operator in a power plant brings, the verdict is that she wouldn’t give up her captaincy for the world. There’s something heartening about that, the idea that Janeway isn’t trapped in this sometimes lonely life, but when her free will is restored, would choose it once more. (Shades of “Shattered”.)

But I also appreciate the fact that it comes as a cost. By god, however quickfire or shallow the romance, Kathryn and Jaffen are cute together. I appreciate the fact that he is not, as I predicted, an agent of the enemy or a turncoat. (Though I’ll admit, him disappearing when the bad guys had Janeway cornered in the power plant had me suspicious.) When Janeway turns Chakotay in to the authorities (or is at least implied to have done so), you understand why she wouldn’t want to risk this beautiful life for a bleeding stranger spouting tall tales.

Not for nothing, the subtext of the episode isn’t just a choice for Janeway between Quarra and Voyager; it’s between Jaffen and Chakotay. The show smartly never makes it explicit, but in some ways, this is a battle for Kathryn’s heart: the life she made with one partner versus the life she made with another. There’s a charged quality to the scenes between both pairings, the kind the series had seemingly shied away from for a while before “Shattered” came around. And it heightens the sense that Kathryn is being pulled between two things she cares very deeply about.

Of course, we can't just have matters of the heart prevail. Amid the conspiracy unraveling there are hostages, and bad guys held at gunpoint, and daring escapes from police officers that involve grand leaps and device-smashing. The derring do of Harry and the Doctor above in fending off Quarran attack ships keeps up the space explosion quota, and Janeway and Jaffen evading laser fire to shut down the power plant, and with it, the planetary shield preventing their rescue, gives both some action-y to do with a sharply-written larger purpose.

Really, though, much of it feels inevitable. Ultimately, I’m more moved by the aftermath. The Quarran minister is aghast, pretending a tidy end to something that seemed more complicated and deeply rooted, but which at least shows our heroes’ efforts were worth it. B’Elanna kisses her husband, for recognizing an intrinsic need to care for her, even when he didn’t know who she was.

And Janeway bids farewell to Jaffen, unable to turn away from her life as a Starship Captain, or even to continue their relationship if he were to come on board, but also unable to ignore the deep feeling of connection and loss that comes from their joining and parting. The look of pain on Kathryn’s face when she hugs her beau one last time is heartbreaking, and the familiar sense of self-possessed certainty when she tells her work-husband, Chakotay, that there’s no other life she’d rather have, is inspiring.

I tend to roll my eyes at slippery slope arguments in general. But if you really want something, if it’s a deep and persistent need inside you, if there’s something that feels deeply wrong or, better yet, feels like home, sometimes a little push in the right direction is all it takes. In “Workforce” it’s enough to restore a life or change a society. And while it takes more than one little push, in Voyager, it’s also enough to spur a small but unshakable community to chart a course for home.

[8.3/10] I love the way “Workforce pt. 1” just throws you into the deep end. For the first third of the episode, there is no explanation, no exposition, no backstory. Instead, boom, Janeway is in some fancy alien factory. Seven is using her human name and is an efficiency expert. Tom is in a bar pleading for a job. B’Elanna is wandering in and just as quickly heading out. And Tuvok is laughing. Laughing! And nary a word of how or why they all got there.

It’s different. That's what I want from Voyager in season 7, and in the twenty-fifth season of Star Trek overall. Despite being in the Delta Quadrant, so often the series feels like the same old thing, rhythms we’ve seen for thirty-five years danced to once more. It becomes easy for the jaded viewer (read: me) to enjoy it but see the seams. And it makes episodes like this one, that go for something different in terms of setting and character and even the tone, feel like a breath of fresh air.

Some of that is the production and design and the direction. The Quarran factory is one of the show’s most ambitious sets, with multiple levels and a series of chaotic, wide open spaces that are a far cry from the usual caves and cardboard. The dark lighting and general wreckage of a beaten up Voyager helps sell the desperate circumstances of the ship and its skeleton crew and conveys that this is anything but business as usual.

Most notably, series veteran director Allan Kroeker shoots multiple scenes like this is The West Wing. In the factory setting in particular, there is a flurry of movement and energy, with walk-and-talks and swinging cameras that convey the factory floor as a hive of activity in ways the stately Starfleet vessel rarely is. So much of the first half of the “Workforce” duology is about communicating the ways in which our heroes’ lives have been turned upside down, and the show accomplishes that as much with its visual approach as it does with its storytelling.

In that spirit, there’s something fun about things being so different that you’re not totally sure what’s going on. The lack of exposition means we get to be disoriented by the change and given to wonder about what could lead the captain of a starship devoted to getting her people home to work in some giant industrial tangle. For a solid fifteen minutes, you just drink it in, which is intoxicating in its way. Hell, until Tuvok’s “radiation inoculation” flashback, I’d assumed this whole thing might be a spy mission to free the workers. It’s neat to be so wrong and to see the show craft such a genuine and engrossing mystery by diving right in!

The same goes for the business back on Voyager. There’s a certain thrill to seeing the Doctor as a one-man show, trying to repair an entire starship on his own. The return of Chakotay, Harry, and Neelix from an away mission to find their ship seemingly abandoned, forced to patrol it in EV suits, give the whole thing a creepy quality. (Shades of “The Tholian Web” from The Original Series.) There too, the audience is coaxed to wonder what could have happened to leave the ship in such a state, its crew missing and its systems devastated.

Then, of course, we find out. And as invigorating as those mysterious, energetic opening acts are, it’s a tribute to the overall quality of “Workforce pt. 1” that the show doesn’t lose its zing when we’re let in on what’s going down.

The plotting here is strong. The central premise -- of Voyager’s humanoid crew being boobytrapped, kidnapped, and brainwashed to happily work on a planet with a severe labor shortage -- has tons of potential. The concept comes with inherent social commentary, with a critique of the way that a demand for working bodies leads to ignoring agency and even human rights in some instances. That theme is more hinted at than explored in this opening hour, but it’s a strong undercurrent of the proceedings.

The pure beat-by-beat plot engines are strong too. Tuvok having an instinctual aversion to the injections, because they flash him back to his brainwashing, works as a nice catalyst for him as a fly in the Quarrans’ ointment. Tim Russ gives a strong performance as always, communicating the strangeness of a Vulcan laughing, the sense of something nagging at his brain when flashes of his true past come, and the disturbed desperation when he truly starts to realize what’s happened to him. It works as a meld (if you’ll pardon the pun) of character and story. Tuvok has an epiphany, at the same time his flashbacks reveal the truth to the audience, and his efforts to escape cause problems for others at the factory.

Similarly, there's plenty for those remaining on Voyager to do once they’re able to get Voyager up and running again. “Our people are trapped on the planet, and those of us still on the ship have to figure out a way to rescue them” is an old trope for Star Trek. But it’s given new life via the skeleton crew led by Chakotay who have to make do with two percent of the ship’s usual complement. The lack of manpower, the recalcitrance of the Quarran government, and a need to go undercover to get their friends out all pose exciting yet practical challenges to resolve the issues at hand.

But what I like most about this episode is that it’s a look at who our heroes are when that status quo is disrupted, for the characters who are brainwashed and even the ones who aren’t. Part of the thrill of “Workforce pt. 1” is getting to see The Doctor finally become the Emergency Command Hologram for real after his daydreams in “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy”. The way he gets the nod from Janeway as the crew is suffering from radiation sickness, directs the ship through an enemy attack with aplomb, and stands up to the brute on the other side of the viewscreen is a vindication of the potential he’s long shown.

He’s not the only member of the crew who’s aspired to more though. One of the deftest choices in the script is to create friction between Doc and Harry. Doc has been proving himself as the lone crewmember about Voyager for days. Harry has been angling for a promotion himself and commanding the bridge on the night shift. Both of them see this unfortunate incident as a chance to show what they’re capable of. The way they bristle against one another, each trying to assert themselves in the vacuum left by the others’ absences, speaks to how big dreams and big opportunities unfurling in parallel can lead to tension, even among friends.

Yet, the most compelling part of this one may be what bears out in our heroes even when they’ve had their minds wiped by some venal taskmasters who just want happy workers. (And by the way, my bet is that Umali the bartender is in on the hoodwink, and Jaffen too for that matter, but we’ll have to wait and see.) Even when her human name is returned and her Borg past is erased, Seven is still a brusque worker all but obsessed with efficiency. Even when made into a jovial worker, Tuvok looks at something as whimsical as humor through a logical lens.

And even when they’re entirely different people, Tom and B’Elanna manage to find each other.

That is a lovely idea. Given the brain erasure, neither Paris nor Torres knows that they’re in love, that they’re married, that they’re expecting a child together. The social mores of Quarran society seem to suggest that they’re incompatible: him a bar back who can't keep a job and her a single mother-to-be. THeir lives are in different places, and they can't exactly pick up where they left off.

Nevertheless, with all that smoke between them, their hearts still clear a path. The fact that even when romance is out of the question, Tom tries to help B’Elanna, connects her with our expectant parents to give her community and belonging, speaks to a compassion between them that wins out. And again, even when slipped into different personas, there’s chemistry between them that abides. The notion that the kind of care and affection between two people cannot be erased, that it persists despite technological and physiological subterfuge, is as heartening as anything you’ll find in Star Trek.

In that sense, “Workforce” works as the negative image of “The Killing Game”. There, the novelty was seeing our heroes out of character, thrust into roles that didn’t necessarily fit and reveling in the way they broke character with vestiges of who they really were peaking through the programming now and then. This story is a similar idea, but done differently.

Here, Tom is still Tom. B’Elanna is still B’Elanna. But they’re bent and twisted a little bit, just enough really, for the audience to see what parts of them persist when someone puts them in a different package. That's a fascinating method of character study, the kind that can only come to fruition in speculative fiction.

Which is why I love the Janeway story. We’ve seen the Captain delve into romances before, from passing dalliances to holodeck hotties to her ongoing unspoken bond with Chakotay. But as The Doctor pointed out in “Fair Haven”, Kathryn is in a precarious position for love. As the Captain of this crew, it would be inappropriate for her to “fraternize”, as she puts it here, with her subordinates, and the nature of their journey home means a more permanent connection with an outsider is a dicey proposition. Janeway can still love, but her position means she’s almost duty-bound to close herself off from love.

So while I’m not over the moon about Jaffen, her suitor-of-the-week and fellow worker in the Quarran factory, I am for the idea that, in an odd sense, this kidnapping and brainwashing frees Janeway from the shackles of her responsibilities and, in an odd way, lets her live her best life. Kathryn and Jaffen are cute enough together, with some nice playful moments and believable chemistry, even if it’s not the deepest love story there’s ever been.

What’s more compelling is this distinct vision of Kathryn Janeway: one who can be great at work without having the weight of the world on her shoulders, one who can be jovial and even flirty in a way we’re not accustomed to seeing, and most notably, one who has space in her life and in her heart for love when she doesn't have to put the needs of an entire starship first.

The Quarran homeworld is a trap, a place of abuse, a society where innocent bystanders have their autonomy surgically removed and are transformed into happy and complaint worker bees for a system that isn’t afraid to use them up and spit them out. And yet, in the midst of this unknown violation, our Captain is thriving, with a glimpse of the kind of life she might have led had fate and happenstance not intervened. Despite the quiet horrors of this place, one must imagine Janeway happy.

Who knows where things go from here. The writers do some deft weaving of these story threads together in the climax. Tuvok’s fleeting meld with Seven, B’Elanna being beamed back to Voyager against her will, Janeway moving in with Jaffen, and Chakotay being cornered by the authorities all froth to a boil at the exact same time, intercut in a way to evoke maximum drama before the “To Be Continued...” Despite all that, Star Trek two-parters have a habit of having better setups than payoffs.

If this is all we got though, it would be enough. A rich and engrossing mystery, a strong and intriguing plot, and most of all, a glimpse at who these characters are and might have been, if only things were a little bit different. I don’t know if that would mean much in Voyager’s first season. But here and now, after so long seeing the status quo tested and restored, it means a lot.

[8.5/10] There’s the occasional episode of Voyager that is both satisfying and frustrating: satisfying because it’s always a boon when the series is living up to its potential, and frustrating because it makes me ask, “Why isn’t the whole show like this?”

I don’t just mean in terms of quality. “The Void” sees Janeway and company sucked into the titular pocket of space, where they are trapped, starved for resources, and forced to fend off raiders from the minute they arrive. (Shades of “The Time Trap” from The Animated Series.) Their new circumstances force the Captain to make hard choices about who to trust, whether to bend the rules and seize opportunities wherever they find them amid this desperate situation or stick to their principles even if it could cost the crew their lives. Savvy watchers know our heroes will find their way out of this, but trapped in the Void, things feel genuinely desperate for once.

The results are glorious. The ship has to conserve resources at every turn, with deft choices to use low lighting to signify the way power is being rationed. The law of the jungle takes hold, with scavengers and brigands stealing Voyager’s supplies without provocation. And there is a genuine push-and-pull aboard the ship over whether they should forsake some of their Starfleet strictures in the name of necessity in a lawless and dangerous corner of space.

That's all well and good, and the show has great success in both setting the atmosphere (with veteran series director Mike Vejar doing stellar work as always) and in creating decision points large and small that elucidate the twin battles for survival and for the soul of Voyager taking place at the same time.

My only disappointment is that, as we embark on the series’ home stretch, I’m given to wonder why wasn’t this Voyager the whole time? Being stranded in the Delta Quadrant isn’t much different than being stranded in the Void. Janeway and company are still lacking in allies with plenty of risk that various local powers could try to rob or otherwise take advantage of the. Why we see a fairly comfortable, seedy journey as they make their way through this region of space, rather than being forced to consider the kind of practical compromises and pragmatic struggles presented here, is beyond me.

Still, I’m grateful for what we do get in “The Void”! The episode has the quality of a zombie movie, obviously not in the sense of having to fend off the undead (though the scavengers have a little of that vibe), and more in the sense of exploring how different groups respond when the rules for normal society have fallen away. Janeway’s balance of wanting to be smart and crafty in a realm where everyone seems to be out for themselves, while not tossing aside Federation values, leads to heaps of interesting interactions and tough calls that make for one of the character’s finest hours.

I don’t say that lightly. The Captain can be frustrating here. Much of “The Void” feels of a piece with early pre-Borg truce installments of Voyager, where Janeway could be maddeningly rigid about not disturbing so much as a blade of grass in the Delta Quadrant if it might violate the Prime Directive. Outings like “Alliances” from season 2 would see her start to relax that policy, only to affirm her strict devotion to the Federation’s founding ideals and Starfleet protocols, no matter what.

What I like about “The Void”, though, is that it’s not about blind fealty to rules or principles when you’re so far removed from the environment in which they were forged and make sense. It is, instead, the exact opposite -- a story about how those principles are, in many ways, their own kind of movable feast. And rather than that sense of idealism and trust being Voyager’s downfall, it is instead their salvation.

There’s something endlessly heartening about the idea that even thirty thousand lightyears from the Federation, what ultimately protects Voyager and gives it the resources and knowhow necessary to escape this godforsaken region of space, turns out to be building a miniature version of the Federation. Hewing to the ideals that make the UFP, and Star Trek, stand out -- tolerance, generosity, mutual cooperation -- are what preserve our heroes; not giving into lawless opportunism. You can't be a Trekkie for this long and not appreciate that at least a little.

It is, in many ways, Janeway’s biggest gamble yet. She shares food and medical supplies. She offers the moral strictures of Starfleet as the table stakes for participation in her mini-Federation; she opens her ship up to strangers who could just as easily take advantage of her. In short, she takes chances on compassion and trust, and it pays off.

Much as in “The Time Trap”, there’s a thrill from seeing representatives of various Delta Quadrant species united and working together given how they’ve all been thrown into this peculiar predicament. The common defense pact between Janeway and Captain Garon, the way the pooling of knowledge leads to efficient replicator use that helps them feed everyone, even the Hierarchy aliens using their spy tech to snoop on the alliance’s enemy are all encouraging displays of what this approach can do, even divorced from the Alpha Quadrant circumstances that birthed it.

I also appreciate the fact that not everything is hunky dory here. The Captain is decisive and commanding, in a way that makes you want to run through a wall for her, but there’s also dissent and doubt among the crew in ways we’ve rarely seen before. The antagonistic General Valen is unrepentant about nabbing Voyager’s supplies and isn’t afraid to kick our heroes when they’re down. Even the fact that he’s willing to make his own kinds of alliance to wreck Voyager and steal the mini-Federation’s resources shows how these good and noble ideas can be perverted for bad ends.

What I like most, though, is the fact that it’s not as though Janeway’s alliance is one big song of kumbaya, even once they get past its rocky early stages. (And the time jumps between commercial breaks helps cover for that, some.) Her one regret in all of this isn’t a failure to be more ruthless or pragmatic; it’s letting a group of bigots into the tent because she thought they might be useful, to where she ultimately has to kick them out for attacking and stealing rather than adhering to the alliance’s code to only trade and partner, no matter what helpful tech they might have. As much as the idea of the mini-Federation lifts Voyager, it also comes at a cost, which is as it should be.

The choice to protect the vulnerable and excommunicate the bigots comes with a certain poetic irony. The Doctor forges a bond with Fantome, a local alien played with expressive physicality by Hugh himself, Jonathan del Arco. It is a tribute to Janeway and the Doctor’s altruism that they take in these reviled denizens of the Void, give them food and learn to communicate with them. It speaks the exponential returns on compassion when the scavengers use their unique physiology to help Voyager escape their attackers.

And it is poetic that these “vermin” that brutes like General Valen and Captain Bosaal underestimate and revile, who have a language and a community deeper and more profound than their doubters would countenance, turn out to be the ones that provide for the baddies’ defeat and their good samaritans’ escape.

Of course, Janeway and her allies do eventually escape. The script smartly gives us a failed attempt in the early going to help make the later attempt seem that much more desperate and cathartic. The ticking clock of depleted resources and enemies at the gates adds to the thrill factor. And seeing our heroes finally make it into normal space, with their new comrades in tow, is rousing as all hell. Their success is a vindication of Janeway’s high-minded principles and the ingenuity of her approach.

One of the Star Trek lines that has stuck with me the longest is Deep Space Nine’s admonition that, “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” That series reached incredible narrative and thematic heights by exploring the ways in which Federation values don’t always travel. They may not mean much to those without the prodigious resources at Starfleet’s disposal. And the idea that even the leaders of the noble Federation bend the rules or sacrifice their ethics or turn a blind eye to the dirty work of civilization in the face of existential threats added a layer of complexity to the franchise and its exploration of humanity’s future that remains unmatched in Star Trek.

Yet, I love “The Void” as a representation of the opposite idea -- that those hopeful Federation values of altruism and tolerance and mutual aid can be the foundation of something greater in any scenario or setting. Captain Janeway has been rewarded a hundred-fold for forging similar “alliances” with a Talaxian trader, an Ocompan naif, a former Borg, and even a group of rebels from the Federation. She has made compromises but also drawn lines in the name of not forgetting who they are no matter how far from home they may be. And the results of that optimism and devotion is a ship that's already halfway home, and a crew that has forged the bonds needed to see them through the journey.

There is room within Star Trek for all of these perspectives. I continue to adore the deconstruction represented by Deep Space Nine’s larger project, but I will always have a place in my heart for the optimism at the core of Star Trek’s own founding principles. And I’m inspired by the idea that even if we’re not saints, with those ideals in tow, sometimes we can still make our own paradise.

[7.1/10[ “Prophecy” isn’t boring; I’ll give it that much. From the jump, we’re being attacked by Klingons, and then bunking with Klingons, and sparring with Klingons, and fending off a mutiny by Klingons. As silly as it is that Voyager keeps running into representatives from the Alpha Quadrant like this, the episode knows how to move, which honestly helps a good bit.

It’s also part of the problem. There are a ton of interesting ideas here! What does it mean to have to cohabitate with a culture that doesn't share your norms or values? (They dug into this a little bit just one episode prior in “Repentance”.) How much should you bend the truth in your interpretation of holy texts in the name of doing good for your people? What value can ritual and tradition and a connection to one’s heritage bring to those who may feel disconnected from it?

Most importantly, how much do you give in to something you don’t believe in or agree with for the greater good? The heart of “Prophecy” is the idea that a group of Klingon pilgrims, who’ve sojourned out to the Delta Quadrant to fulfill a scriptural prophecy, believe that B’Elanna’s baby is their messiah. What that means to B’Elanna, how much she’s willing to go along with the Klingon leader’s scheme, and whether the experience might awaken something in her, all raise thorny personal and cultural questions that could fuel the episode.

Strange New Worlds did an episode tackling a similar idea, about how much to allow for religious prophecy and culture differences when dealing with another civilization. And Deep Space Nine got multiple seasons’ worth of tension and meaning out of the, “These people think I’m their messiah, but I don’t necessarily want to be” game. Digging into what that means for B’Elanna in particular, who has a fraught history, to say the least, with Klingon culture and religion, could be a boon for Voyager.

Unfortunately, there’s just no time. No sooner do we run into the Klingons than they’ve destroyed their own ship and are aboard Voyager. No sooner do they arrive than they’re practically worshiping B’Elanna. No sooner does she become an object of adoration than it’s revealed that this is all a scheme by the sect’s leader, Kohlar, to get his people to stop wandering. No sooner does B’Elanna reluctantly agree to participate in that scheme, then Tom gets crosswise with the Klingon dissenter, T’Greth, and they’re duking it out in the holodeck.

No sooner are the two bros mixing it up with blunted bat’leths than it’s revealed that all these Klingons carry a deadly virus. No sooner does B’Elanna get the news that she and her child have been infected with the same than T’Greth stages a mutiny. And no sooner is phaser fire exchanged across Voyager then it turns out the fetus has special stem cells that can cure the Klingon sect of their maladies, and they agree to settle on the ship.

Frankly, you could take any pair of these plot points and build a good episode out of it. Klingons are forced to bunk on Voyager until intercultural tensions become too much and a mutiny breaks out? Could be great! B’Elanna grows closer to Klingon culture only to become wary when she catches an illness that threatens the life of her child? There’s a ton to explore there! Agreeing to help promote a prophecy you don’t believe for pragmatic reasons in only to discover that, in a roundabout way, it comes true? It’s a bit of a cliche, even limited to Star Trek, but you could do plenty with that idea.

But when you try to do all kajillion at once, the result is that every storyline feels underfed. There’s not enough time to really sit with the characters and see them process these experiences in a way that adds meaning to the story, because as soon as you hit one plot point, it’s off to the next. There’s disruptor blasters and fist fights and literal sparks flying to focus on instead!

And that's all before the pretty abominable and unnecessary B-plot in “Prophecy.” For starters, the episode promises us a Bert and Ernie routine between Tuvok and Neelix that we barely get to see! How dare you!

More to the point, I don’t derive a lot of laughs from poor Harry Kim being sexually harassed by a Klingon woman who won’t leave him alone, and the Doctor basically saying, “tough luck, you better go schtup her.” Context is everything, but geeze. Neelix finding Klingons unique and enchanting is worth something, but him playacting at roughing up Harry so he can garner the lust of Ch’Rega is more zany sitcom-level writing. Ethan Phillips plays it all well, but in an episode that's already struggling to find time for its legitimate storytelling, we didn't need a flop-sweat filled interspecies sex comedy in miniature to eat up real estate.

All of this in a shame, because when “Prophecy” isn’t racing from plot point to plot point, or devolving into American Pie-aping nonsense, it has moments that are downright lovely. My favorite scene in the whole damn episode comes when Kohlar asks her to join him in a prayer for the dead. She’s brushed most of this sect’s rigamarole off to this point, but suddenly she mouths along the words to this prayer, and you can see something wash over her: an appreciation, a fulfillment, a connection.

It capitalizes on the good work done in “Barge of the Dead” (and to a lesser extent, Lineage), to show B’Elanna coming to accept the Klingon side of her, and also to make peace with a culture she’s been resistant to up to this point. Becoming a parent, and feeling yourself more a part of that culture, a link in a chain, and getting comfort and meaning from it, is a beautiful thing.

Ultimately, I think that's what “Prophecy” wants to do the most. At the beginning of the episode, B’Elanna is a resistant tolerator of these people and their admiring gaze; by the end, she is bidding them farewell to their new home and hanging Kohlar’s family bat'leth in her home. The journey along the way -- of finding the value in a culture you rebelled from and using your place in it to do good for others -- is a moving one.

Or at least it would be, if the script gave it the time and space it deserved. For all the folderol over “Hey, the prophecy came true in an unorthodox way!” and “Oh no, the Klingons are being unruly somehow!” that makes up the bric-a-brac of the hour, there’s a real and compelling story to be told here. Five of them, frankly. I suppose it’s better to infuse your episode with too many good ideas than too few. Even so, despite the spirit of Klingon fierceness and bluster at play, in my culture (overly analytical nerds), a little more focus and balance remains highly valued.

[6.7/10[ This episode seemed deep and even profound to me when I was a kid. Here we are, talking about justice and forgiveness and rehabilitation and the death penalty, man! Star Trek has something to say about what’s right and wrong with criminal justice and capital punishment, everybody! Time to pull up a chair and listen.

And now, through the lens of adulthood, it feels almost hopelessly quaint, ham-handed, and in some instances completely wrongheaded.

That's not true for every Star Trek episode, or even every Voyager episode. Many of them are deeper and more masterful than I fully appreciated when I was young. (“Latent Image” comes to mind.) But some of this is an inevitable part of growing older and looking at things that once impressed you through the lens of a fuller experience of the world (or, less charitable, a more jaded perspective).

Whatever your vantage point, “Repentance” offers its viewers a diorama in which to explore every topic related to the death penalty in particular and the justice system in general than the writers can think to throw in. The distressed alien ship of the week turn out to be a prison ship, and Voyager must take on a crop of harsh warden and their death row inmates, with all the Prime Directive-mandated moral discomfort that entails.

Honestly, it’s not a bad setup. It’s one thing for*Voyager* to simply be duty-bound not to interfere with some alien goings on. It’s quite another for the crew to have to actively aid and abet members of a species whose core values seem much different than Starfleet’s. Watching Janeway and Tuvok have to balance the principles of tolerance with the principles of mercy, not to mention the practicality of diplomacy, is a good element to the episode.

And hey, I enjoy a good boardroom debate in Star Trek as much as anyone. There’s plenty of times where “Repentance” veers into “This should have just been an essay territory.” But having Seven and The Doctor debate mercy, or Neelix and Tom go back and forth on bias in the system, or to hear others examine victim’s rights in criminal cases is thought-provoking. The show gets a little caricatured in its abstractions here, with surviving family members of the slain getting to impose the death penalty unchecked and wealthy murderers being able to buy their way out of it. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of food for thought here.

The problem is that, at heart, “Repentance” is a character story, and the character arcs vary from the trite to the problematic.

On the trite end of the perspective, we have Seven developing a bond with Iko, the seemingly sociopathic killer who holds her hostage at the beginning of the episode. Both actors do a good job, and there’s some interesting, human moments for both players in the story, but the trajectory feels a little cliche. “Skeptical person visits dangerous prisoner, only for the skeptic to warm to the captive, and the dangerous one to reform” is both familiar and hokey. There’s no romance element here, thankfully, but “Repentance” does come with a certain Lifetime movie quality to it.

At the same time, though, it comes with some interesting ideas. While having someone cured of sociopathy through nanoprobes is a little too far-flung, I appreciate Iko’s story as a reflection of the idea that it’s wrong to execute people when their actions may be due to physiological factors beyond their control. We don’t have The Doctor’s ability to cure someone with a single injection, but even so, the notion that there may be biological reasons behind certain behaviors, ones we can understand even if we can't fix them, augurs against a retributivist approach to justice. Oddly enough, House M.D. told a similar story early in that show’s run.

More to the point, there’ s something interesting about a man who’s lived an unrepentant life of craven cruelty experiencing guilt and empathy for the first time, and all in one rush at that. Iko’s heartless bastard routine is a little cartoony for my tastes, but guest star Jeff Kober does a particularly good job at communicating the sense of someone haunted by what he’s done. You feel his pain, his desire to relieve himself of it, and his growing sense that he deserves his punishment now that he has the capacity to bear the weight of his actions.

There is a grand irony to that. The fact that Iko now feels like he deserves to be punished is one of the signs that it’s wrong to put him to death. The script does a good job of conveying this in ways big and small. Obviously his relationship with Seven is the meat of the episode, and his grand gesture to help rather than kill the brutal warden is the grand gesture that cements his change. But the simple act of donating his meal to the inmate he regularly stole food from is a small but powerful sign that Iko’s physiological transition has produced a psychological shift no less profound.

In truth, much of that change is realized through dramatic speeches and purple prose-filled exchanges that left me checking my watch. Despite some good performances, this is more of a “soaring oratory” episode than a “naturalistic dialogue”. Ideas come through rampant speechifying rather than normal conversations. As a result, even where I can appreciate the construction of a scene or a story, it’s harder for any of the proceedings to move me.

But the place where I’m most compelled is in Seven’s story. I love the idea that despite her initial callousness (or, more charity, matter-of-factness) about the death row inmates' circumstances, she finds common ground and, ultimately, investment in Iko because she sees herself in him. Fighting to prove that Iko deserves a second chance despite the blood on his hands, because he’s been freed from an affliction beyond his control, sees Seven subtly fighting to prove that she too deserves the same, despite the red on her ledger, because she too has been freed from an affliction.

That;s a powerful idea. The show gets too sappy or too obvious with it at points. But I am, at heart, a sucker for mother/duaghtere-sque stories with Seven and Janeway. And having Seven tell the captain that she’s trying to do for Iko what Kathryn did for her is a sign that Seven’s journey toward individuality is working, if only in the way she’s internalized the values of kindness and compassion and belief in the best of people from her mentor.

And then there’s the Neelix story. Sigh.

Part of me likes the Neelix story. If you’re going to have an episode where the ostensibly evil prisoner turns out to be good, there’s a certain amount of narrative balance in having the ostensibly good prisoner turn out to be a bit more dastardly. Making it so that every prisoner who’s a full character is good and noble and decent would feel too pollyanna, even for an optimistic show like Voyager.

And I like exploring the idea that people with rough intentions can take advantage of well-meaning, kindhearted individuals like Neelix. The ship’s resident “morale officer” isn’t wrong to offer kindness to the prisoners aboard the ship, to treat them like people, to ensure they’re fed well and even get to know them. Telling a story about the fuzzy line between showing compassion and being taken advantage of is the kind of gray area storytelling I expect from Deep Space Nine, but not really from Voyager, so it’s an interesting line to walk.

Seeing Neelix warm up to Joleg, help him get a letter to his brother, only for that letter to be a surreptitious signal to the sibling to come spring him from prison is an interesting development in the story. It dovetails nicely with Iko’s arc and illustrates how the best of intentions can sometimes lead to bad ends.

But by god, you are in real dicey territory to spend most of the storyline motivating Neelix through him learning about statistics for Joleg’s species that mirror the kind of racial disparities that exist in America’s criminal justice system, only to reveal that the POC prisoner was a lying con artist who was ready to kill again to gain his freedom.

You can read that development generously. There’s something to be said for the idea that what’s true for groups in general isn’t necessarily true for every person, and everyone must be judged, for good or for ill, as an individual. There’s something very true to the Star Trek ethos about that. And if you squint, you can maybe divine the idea that Joleg wasn’t necessarily always a murderer or even guilty of the crime for which he committed, but that being judged harshly for his species and brutalized in prison has turned him into someone willing to kill his tormentor to escape. But “Repentance” doesn’t really play it that way.

Instead, on the one hand, we have a white-coded sociopath who turns out to merely be sick, whom the story turns into a martyr for the ills of the death penalty and our legal system. And on the other, we have a sympathetic POC-coded soul, who’s warm and gracious with Neelix and claims to be a victim of systematic prejudice, only for him to turn out to be a manipulative bastard who’s willing to kill and ready to fake illness to get out. That sits really uneasily with me for an episode whose higher aims seem to be pointing out flaws in our system.

Still, that's the funny thing about my feeling differently about “Repentance” now than I did when I was a young man. I didn’t just go out and experience the world once I grew up. I read and studied and learned. I took classes on politics and philosophy and the principles that undergird our legal system.

But I did these things at least partly because I was inspired by stories like this one, that challenged me to consider these issues more deeply and open my mind to broader possibilities. Shows like Voyager influenced me to dive deeper into these areas than the show had time or space to cover in its precious forty-five minute chunks, and my level of understanding of the complexity and nuance at play grew. For my rating at least, “Repentance” is, oddly enough, a victim of its own past success.

[7.6/10] It was hard to watch Family Guy the same way after the second half of “Cartoon Wars” aired. The show still has its measure of laughs, and this episode goes to extremes in its depiction of Seth MacFarlane’s style of comedy. But once you’ve seen the formula laid bare like this, it’s hard to go back to turning your brain off and just enjoying the random irreverence without seeing the seams. For at least one dumb teenager in the audience, South Park made its point, and in an odd way, won the war.

In some ways, South Park won the war just by being funny. The scene where the town of South Park is debating who should be the one not to bury their head, only for a neve-rbefore-seen couple to reenact a scene out of an old school disaster movie and Garrison to cap it off with “Who the hell are those people?” is the kind of random humor that is more inspired by the likes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but also wouldn’t feel out of place on Family Guy. It’s just done to pitch perfection, with a kind of “fuck you” energy that practically feels like the show thumbing its nose at Peter Griffin.

And yet, some stuff is apolitical, and not random, but just rib-tickling. I have to tell you, there is something about Fox studios having a “high security’ barricade, and Cartman riding right under it in his big wheel, that cracked me up. The terrorist video ending with not just a “the end”, but a slow spun question mark feels like a silly throw in, but one that tickles the funny bone. I have to tell you, I don’t know why, but Cartman naming his Danish victim character “little Danny Pocket” is hilarious to me for reasons that elude me. And Kyle and Cartman’s “epic” confrontation coming down to an extended, characteristic elementary school slap fight is incredible.

Hell, as much as this episode takes greater aim at Family Guy in its spoof of the show’s creative process, there’s something so inherently absurd about a television show being written through a tank full of manatees and “idea balls” that it’s humorous even if you’ve never seen Family Guy. Even just Kyle’s plain bewilderment when people mention the show’s “writer’s room” without context brings the yuks. As much as the show wants to skewer its juvenile TV rivals and make a point about free speech, South Park doesn’t forget to just be funny here, which counts for a lot.

Still, it does take time to poke fun at its animated TV brethren. I gotta say, as an inveterate Simpsons fan, I was puzzled then, and I remain puzzled now, about what “Cartoon Wars” is trying to do with Bart Simpson here. There’s a bit of a recognition of the changing of the guard, with Cartman pointing out how much further he’s gone in his “pranks” than Bart has, much as Bart once did to Dennis the Menace. And there’s a pure novelty factor to seeing Bart done up in the South Park aesthetic, and teaming up with Cartman and Kyle.

But for the most part, he seems out of character and lacking much in the way of purpose beyond the “Hey! They crossed over another cartoon here!” and perhaps acknowledging that Simpsons fans and writers harbored some enmity for Family Guy as well. On that front, Trey Parker and Matt Stone offer their highest praise for Bigger Longer and Uncut guest star Mike Judge and King of the Hill, with the implication that his show is just chugging along nicely while everyone else dukes it out.

Still, as with part one, this is mostly focused on free speech, censorship, and terrorism. If nothing else, you have to admire the chutzpah of South Park here. They are laying their issues with network censorship bare and getting Comedy Central to air it (or most of it, anyway). They note their own squabbles through the trials and travails of Terrence and Phillip; they poke fun at their own show for being preachy and “up its own ass with messages,” and they outright make an appeal to the head of Comedy Central by name to have the courage to let them depict the Prophet Mohammad.

And they get censored in the process.

Honestly, it’s kind of better this way. I don’t just mean for the protection of the lives and well-being of the people who work on the show and for the network. But also because it makes their point for them. The fact that Comedy Central will review a sophomoric skit where people poop on: each other, the President of the United States, Jesus, and the American flag, and has no qualms about releasing it to airwaves, but refuses to air a neutral scene that includes Mohammad says more than any fictional story they might tell ever could.

So much of “Cartoon Wars” is about hypocrisy and courage and double standards. If I have a problem with how the episode is crafted, it’s that it’s almost too on the nose. Kyle’s often (though not always) the voice of reason on the show, and Cartman is almost always the voice of evil. So having Kyle voice what seems like the writers’ genuine perspective to a network president stand-in, while Cartman holds him at gunpoint and demands he gives into violence, is a little on the nose in my book. Maybe it’s just not being a teenager anymore, or recalling this episode from my youth and so knowing where they’re going and what they’re trying to say, but part two feels more heavy handed than I remembered.

In some ways, though, the real life events save the widow. You can disagree with Parker and Stone for how they lay out their takeaway here, but at the end of the day, they prove their point. The threat of violence wins. One religion’s sensitivities get prized over another. The true irony is that in not being allowed to depict Mohammad, South Park makes the point it’s more interested in expressing that much louder and clearer.

But here’s the funny thing. As someone who’s wasted far too much of his life watching TV, writing about TV, and thinking about TV -- I’m sympathetic to the idea that no episode of television is worth risking people’s lives. The threat against South Park was attenuated at best, and I’m hesitant about the other extreme -- of teaching extremists that violent threats work. But I at least think there’s a nuance here that's simpler than a good kid making a plea for free speech and a bad kid threatening a network executive with a gun.

More to the point, Kyle’s “Either it's all okay, or none of it is” perspective sits more uneasily with me in the present than it did in 2006. It is not easy to stand up to terrorism, but it is easy to take the position that sacrificing free speech to assuage terrorist threats is bad. When the people on the other side of the issue are extremist assholes who want to murder you over the mere fact of depiction, it’s not hard to feel like you’re fighting the good fight.

But these days, I am leery of the free speech absolutism that “Cartoon Wars” preaches here. I am leary if the “If you draw any line about what’s acceptable, you’ll just keep drawing lines into oblivion” slippery slope argument that South Park makes here. Just as the real life censorship proves Trey and Matt’s point to some degree here, the fact that they were censored, and yet South Park is still chugging along itself nearly twenty years later undermines their “one ounce of censorship is worth a pound of T.V. destruction” point.

More than that, in the modern day, the conflict over free expression du jour is not between raunchy but satirical provocateurs and religious extremists (be they of the Christian or Muslim variety). It is, instead, between people who think there ought to be some standard for respect or sensitivity in our culture and those who think that any interpersonal consequences they face for saying things that are racist, sexist, homophobia, etc. is “censorship” and a violation of free speech.

As the show itself acknowledged in season 20, we’re living in a world made, or at least influenced, by South Park. A generation of reformed (or unreconstructed) edgelords who once worshiped at the altar of Cartman, Eminem, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin have come into an age where people conflate standing up to terrorist threats in the name of free expression with standing up to people who tell them to shut the hell up for using the n-word.

“Cartoon Wars” preaches a concern that showing a little restraint will lead to having to shut down anything with a perspective. The irony is that the reverse is true -- a demand that anything goes has created a world, or at least a contingent, who believe that even the mildest public disapproval of what they have to say is evil censorship, no matter how hateful it might be.

That is the most peculiar thing about revisiting this episode for me. It’s still funny. It’s still a strong time capsule and critique of the state of adult animated shows circa 2006. It still has something worthwhile, if myopic, to say about who and what network censor will give in to, and what they won’t.

But in the years since the episode aired, the world has changed dramatically, and the things South Park is railing against feel like they’ve swung the other direction, in a way that gives me pause over what was once one of my favorite shows is trying to say here. When I watched this episode originally, it changed how I felt about Family Guy. And the many years and unprecedented events that have cracked open the world since then, have changed how I feel about South Park.

[7.5/10] Here’s what I can tell you about “Cartoon Wars” -- it felt like the biggest deal in the world at the time. If you were an edgelord teenager, reared on raunchy cartoons your parents disapproved, the idea of South Park taking aim at Family Guy felt like a clash of the titans. I vividly remember getting to the end of the episode, realizing I wouldn’t get to see the ending for another week, and feeling like it may as well have been an eternity. For a certain set of idiot young adults like myself, this was a revelation.

What’s funny is that, in hindsight, “Cartoon Wars” isn’t really about that, particularly not in its first half. There is certainly some shade thrown Family Guy’s way. Cartman’s criticism of the show being filled with random, interchangeable jokes, and him balking at having his sense of humor compared to theirs feels like Trey Parker and Matt Stone venting their true frustrations. And lord knows their depiction of Family Guy’s “You think that's bad?” cutaways is far from flattering.

But the truth is that, in the first part of this at least, the Family Guy criticisms are a vehicle for a bigger kind of criticism. Hell South Park pokes fun at itself as much as it pokes fun at its Quahog neighbors. Despite dialogue disclaiming the similarities, the lines about Family Guy resorting to boundary pushing toilet humor are self-aware. The...homage to Peter Griffin and company is more of a means to an end than the point of the episode.

That end is to comment on censorship and violence, particularly the kind of fearful reaction to the real life loss of lives that emerged from the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And despite a certain bluntness to the story here, it’s a good look for South Park. I don’t necessarily agree with everything Parker and Stone have to say here, but in the spirit of the episode, I appreciate the way that show that had long courted controversy took a stand in favor of people’s freedom to court controversy in the face of those who mean to shut down free speech with violence.

Is it self-serving? Certainly. Trey and Matt are transparently defending their own right to skewer anything they set their mind to. But they’re also making a broader argument in favor of people more generally standing behind controversial art, or at a minimum, not succumbing to double standards about what we will and won’t tolerate based purely on lethal threats.

Of course, this being South Park, there is some satirizing of moral panics. The town panicking and going crazy in the face of Family Guy’s episode depicting Mohammed is in line with the rabble-rabble spirit of the locals, who’ll resort to chaos and pandemonium at the first opportunity.

But there’s also a side dish of taking aim at hypocrisy. You’d have to be naive to believe that Cartman has truly had a change of heart and cares about insensitive depictions of Muslims in Western media. But there is something even more pointed in the episode’s insinuation that there are people like Cartman out there, who don’t really care about the moral causes they pretend to take up the mantle of, but in reality simply dislike things they have personal objections to and will use whatever means at their disposal to take them down.

It makes sense for a series that was often targeted by the religious right, the Parents Television Council, and other pearl-clutchers of the 1990s and 2000s, to throw stones at people claiming they're looking out for the interests of innocents, when in reality they just have an ax to grind. It is, admittedly, somewhat pernicious to paint everyone (or at least many people) who harbored genuine concerns about whether the artistic integrity of displaying depictions of Mohammed was worth the potential body count disingenuous malcontents. But then again, the show rarely treats Cartman as a paragon of good or representative behavior.

To the point, you also have Kyle, who wants to get the episode pulled but for reasons of altruism and legitimate fear for his loved ones, as a counterpoint. The show often uses Cartman and Kyle as twin ends of the spectrum, and so there’s a natural dovetailing to have them be the avatars for the show’s major points. Eck, to the point of the dialogue, it creates genuine conflict and emotion to have Kyle be turned to a true believer based on Cartman’s rhetoric only to realize he’s being manipulated to ill ends.

Despite all that, the episode is just funny in places. Even if you didn’t follow all the cultural homages of the times, the mere fact that Kyle and Cartman have a “high speed” big wheel chase on the open road, that results in implausible explosions and high octane swerves is the right kind of absurd. Apart from the inter-show critiques, and the social commentary, you can almost sense South Park showing off here, not only its improved animation but the fact that apart from what it has to say, the series can still just be funny.

But it has something to say. That comes through most plainly in Stephen Stotch’s speech to the town assembly. He argues that free speech doesn't mean anything if you just fold at the first sing of trouble, that people have to stand up for even when it’s hard if that idea is going to mean anything. You can sense him as the mouthpiece for the writers’ genuine views. But you can also sense their cynicism when the town instantly decides that literally burying their heads in the sand is safer and easier.

Things can feel immense when you’re young in a way that softens with age. The “war” between South Park and Family Guy didn’t amount to much. Threats over the depiction of Mohammed feel pretty far down on the list of the world’s problems right now. The right to free speech in the United States continues on (more or less) to this day.

But for a moment in time, a bunch of stupid teenagers like me were on the edge of our seats, waiting to hear what our crude but courageous gods had to teach us. Sometimes it was the idea that being juvenile and edgy meant more than just pushing people’s buttons; it meant standing up for others’ rights to express themselves without fear. And sometimes it was fart jokes. All I can tell you is that, at the time, we were riveted.

[6.2/10[ Oh boy. I want to like this episode. The writers go after a lot of things I like. This is a classic Star Trek metaphor, where exploring what giving birth to a child who’s half-Klingon means to B’Elanna allows the show to explore broader contemporary questions of race and acceptance. It’s a small scale story, about people and their problems rather than a bigger adventure about the anomaly of the week or the usual enemy at the gates.

The problem is that it presents an engrossing, thought-provoking concept, wraps it in sitcom-y pregnancy shtick on one end and overblown melodrama on the other, and then ties it off with far too tidy a solution to what is a complex and deep-seated problem. (If this episode and “Extreme Risk” are any indication, it’s a recurring problem for B’Elanna-focused episodes.)

The kickoff for this one is the discovery that B’Elanna is pregnant. And hey, I like that as a storyline! Sure, we only have about half a season to explore it, but what it means to a couple of main characters to become parents for the first time, with all the hope and worry that comes with it, is a good throughline to pursue in the time the show has left. Voyager neglected Tom and B’Elanna for a while, so I can't fault the writers for making up for lost time.

Unfortunately, the way the show goes about exploring that concept is hokey as hell. As with the “Drive”, the last big Tom/B’Elanna episode, there’s a real Home Improvement vibe to the early going of this one. The first couple acts feature goofy gags where everyone’s heard the good news, and crewmates are jockeying to be named the godfather, and Torres and Paris themselves have the standard “I’m excited but don’t know if I’m ready for this” reactions. For a story shape that is surprisingly novel for Star Trek, the depiction here is disappointingly generic.

Eventually, though, “Lineage” pivots the standard new parent folderol into something more personal and piercing. When B’Elanna realizes her daughter will have ridges like her, it dredges up all the self-loathing and fears of ostracism about her own Klingon heritage that B’Elanna has had to work so hard to get past herself. (No matter how uneven the episodes examining that struggle have been.)

The core idea here is strong. We already know that B’Elanna carries a lot of baggage from her childhood. At a broad level, “Lineage” works as a metaphor for any unloved part of yourself you fear passing down to your children. Making past the challenges you faced is one thing, but envisioning an innocent life that you’ve brought into the world having to face those same challenges is quite another. B’Elanna is sympathetic, at least early on, in her baggage about how she felt alienated as a child and worries about the same for her child.

At a deeper level, though, this is a story about race. The episode almost lays it on too thick when B’Elanna is in the holodeck playing Designer Baby and inputs genetic changes that would give her daughter more traditionally Aryan features. What I appreciate about B’Elanna’s reaction to all of this is that it’s complicated, because damnit, the issue itself is complicated.

The idea of genetically altering a baby’s DNA to remove racial features feels abhorrent, and if there’s one heartening thing to take away from this mixed bag of an episode, it’s that Tom is firmly in the camp of “She’ll be wonderful just as she is, same as her mother” right from the start. That said, you understand where B’Elanna is coming from, having faced prejudice based on her Klingon inheritance both inside and out, and wanting to spare her daughter that hardship in a community that is predominantly human.

And at the same time, there is an undercurrent of internalized racism, where a lifetime of rough treatment because of what she is, rather than who he is, has made her ashamed of her Klingon heritage. That self-loathing would only be magnified when the racism comes from your own family, and even a parent. B’Elanna goes to some pretty big extremes here, and what she wants to do offends our (or at least my) sensibilities, but her reasons for wanting it are comprehensible, and often as sympathetic as they are regrettable, which is a sign of good character writing.

Even there, the depiction is a little broad. As with “Extreme Risk”, this whole outing has the tone of an After School Special, lacking a more grounded and intimate approach to these issues that might have elevated the hour. As thought-provoking as the philosophical line-drawing and medical debates are, at base this is a human story (if you’ll pardon the expression), so presenting the main players seem like over-the-top avatars for these ideas rather than more natural individuals in a tough situation weakens the effort.

So does the way everything goes so high volume. It’s not enough for B’Elanna and Tom to be at odds and wrestling with this issue. We need B’Elanna to go hormone crazy, reprogram The Doctor, and lock out the rest of the crew to “fix” this, apparently. We need her and Tom to have another shouting match that somehow solves their problems. We need people acting out across the board in melodramatic ways that sap the sense of realism to what should be a harrowing situation.

I recognize that at the end of the day, Voyager is still an action-adventure series. As heady as the franchise can be much of the time, there’s still the mandated quotient of high drama that producers like Rick Berman reportedly insist upon. I can excuse some of the character assassination of B’Elanna doing something so extreme in the name of old wounds mixed with new biology (though even that's a little problematic). But the soap opera-esque way that the creative team tackles the idea leaves the hour wanting.

More to the point, the solution to all of this is far too simple and straightforward. Compressing a lifetime of anti-Klingon prejudice to a single family camping trip would inevitably feel a little reductive. But you can understand it as a necessary concession to the needs of episodic storytelling, and maybe the worst instance B’Elanna is wrestling with, not the only instance.

Young B’Elanna being bullied by her cousin, and then overhearing her father express disdain over her burgeoning Klingon side is the kind of thing that would do a number on anyone. Again, the presentation of this isn’t great, with overmatched child actors and unavailing guest actors who can't sell the scene perfectly. But the idea itself is heartbreaking enough that you can't help but feel for B’Elanna past and present, and understand why she’d feel so strongly about erasing those unwanted parts of herself in her offspring, even if you think it’s the wrong thing to do.

But then, everything gets just plain facile. Suddenly, it’s not just the crowning achievement of internalized prejudice. It’s that B’Elanna told her father to leave, and he did, and she still blames herself for her parent’s absence. This isn’t just about bigotry; it’s about a fear of abandonment, which is a whole separate thing.

That reveal misses the mark in my book. It turns a more universal-yet-personal thing into a peculiar, particular situation. I don’t want to rag on that concept too much. Sometimes storytellers reach the universal through the specific. But here, it oversimplifies a more complex array of motivations and anxieties into one simple answer and source, which rubs me the wrong way.

Worse yet, all it takes is one big speech from Tom, who’s admittedly been a trooper through the entire episode, to make B’Elanna feel comfortable after a lifetime of harboring this fear of abandonment that's been newly dredged up with extra force. If you want to make this a deep sort of damage that B’Elanna’s been dealing with for her entire life, then you need to do the reveal sooner than the very end of the episode, so you can provide a more plausible, or at least more satisfying path to her overcoming it.

To some extent, all of these single-serving stories convey their points in shorthand. I don’t want to be churlish in my complaints. But we spend ninety percent of the episode on the problem and only ten percent on the solution. That makes the endpoint feel unearned.

All that aside, I’m not made of stone. I can appreciate the cleverness of Tom going to Icheb to make sense of B’Elanna’s genetic chicanery given Icheb’s own lineage.I can appreciate B’Elanna making up for her violation of The Doctor’s being by asking him to be her daughter’s godfather, and how touched he is by the request. And as often as Roxann Dawson overdoes it in an overblown episode, the way she underplays seeing an image of her daughter and recognizing the adorableness and hope she represents, in the child and in herself, for the first time is touching in a way I struggle to articulate.

Still, as noble and interesting as these concepts are, “Lineage” struggles to deliver them without resorting to cliche or melodrama. It’s nice to have a domestic story for once, and one that takes advantage of B’Elanna’s unique heritage at that. Once again, Voyager’s reach exceeds its grasp, even if the prospect of B’Elanna accepting her child, and in a roundabout way accepting herself in the process, remains a wonderful idea.

[7.4/10] “Shattered” has a great premise. As with many high concept Star Trek episodes, you have to turn your brain off a bit for it. But the idea of some sort of temporal shattering, to where the various different parts of the ship are all in different parts of the timeline, is a recipe for fun and excitement.

It’s a particularly apt story for a show in its final season. Chakotay’s time-jumping across Voyager is a nice way to take stock of how far so many of the characters have come, and even take a look toward the future. It’s the kind of episode you can do when you have more than one hundred and fifty episodes under your belt -- the kind of mileage that means you’ve covered ground worth looking back at.

My only problem is that, well, we’ve pretty much done this before. We did the time-jumping forward thing with Kes in “Before and After” and then the time-jumping backwards thing with Kes in “Fury”. We did Barclay imagining himself in the early Voyager era during “Pathfinder”. We had Seven go back in time across multiple Voyager eras in “Relativity”. There’s just not a ton of juice left in that orange at this point. Seeing glimpses of the show’s past doesn’t come with much novelty when the show’s already gone to that well multiple times.

Still, “Shattered” has a sturdy concept that makes up some of the difference. The effect of the anomaly comes with a mission for Chakotay -- to use the Doctor’s “chroniton serum” to inject the ship’s neural gel packs in order for him to be able to reverse the polarity or whatever and get Voyager back in sync. (Remember what I said about turning off your brain.)

That part is a pretty transparent bit of nonsense to make the plato work, but I don't mind because of the result. It turns “Shattered” into what is essentially a haunted house setup. Chakotay and Janeway move from room to room, encountering some new tableau and often a new threat in each new space they enter. That makes it easy to segment these different jaunts across the timeline, giving the audience a chance to wonder what’s around the next corner and creating a constant sense of anticipation.

The only issue with that approach is that the writers don’t pick many interesting places to go. Lord knows that after the dregs of [“Bride of Chaotica”[, I was not asking for more of the Captain Proton holoprogram. I didn’t really need to see the big goofy CGI macrovirus again. It hasn’t been that long since the pitcher plant episode or the dream aliens episode , and as Chakotay himself points out, Voyager encounters that sort of thing on a regular basis. So in terms of thumbing through the memory album here, “Shattered” doesn’t have a ton to show.

It’s also an interesting reminder that the Voyager faithful haven't changed visually a whole lot of seven years, to the point that you can see the show struggling a bit to try to signify that we’re at various points in the timeline. Lord knows we’ve seen Janeway back in the bun several times, but that's about it. They revert Seven to her full Borg getup and put B’Elanna in some Maquis duds I barely remember her wearing. But there’s not a ton of visual novelty to the flashbacks here, which can sometimes make “Shattered” feel like just another day at the office despite its fantastical premise.

Yet, the central theme of the episode is that the changes aboard Voyager have largely been internal ones, and it dramatizes that in a clever way: by pairing up season 7 Chakotay and season 1 Janeway.

I gripe about Chakotay-centric episodes, but he’s honestly the perfect protagonist for what is kind of a sample platter of an episode. The real showpiece here is the visits to each new time-displaced room, and making Chakotay the fulcrum for that means nothing going on with him outshines the gimmick. As Grampa Simpson once put it (by way of writer Don Payne): “In a world of thirty-one flavors, we're the cup of water they rinse the scoops in.” That may be Chakotay’s best type of role.

But it’s also nice getting some extended time with early Janeway experiencing the things that will come to pass when she’s only now beginning to realize the mission that's ahead of her. The show plays fast and loose with the temporal prime directive, but I don’t mind. There’s a fascinating tension between Janeway wanting to know what she’s up against and yet hesitant to learn too much. Kate Mulgrew, a pro as always, absolutely sells Janeway’s wide-eyed wonder at catching glimpses of all the incredible (although sometimes worrying) things that lie ahead.

That's good, because she’s the only one with a real arc here. She’s sharp about this, understandably skeptical when a leading Maquis agent strolls onto her bridge. She is both amazed and concerned when she learns about the people who've been lost and the people who’ve been gained during the course of her captaincy. And she is, not for nothing, flirtatious with Chakotay in a way we haven't seen in a while.

I like that! As much as I’m down on Chakotay, he and Kathryn’s courtly love is one of the few strong elements for the character. Seeing the two of them held close when a hostage situation requires it, or verbally joust in a playful manner as they go on this journey together, or straight p look into one another’s eyes and hint at whether they have a relationship, this is the most directly the show has addressed that part of the characters’ lives in a while. It’s nice to see one of those few parts of the early era of the show that worked brought back.

Which makes sense for the one bit of neat stunt casting that works here -- the return of Seska! Actor and writer Danny Strong once said, “Only on Buffy can you get killed and do three more episodes.” Turns out you can do the same on Voyager. We haven't seen Seksa since the end of season 3 in “Worst Case Scenario”, and to use some Buffy parlance, she was arguably the show’s Big Bad for a while. So unlike a lot of the hop backs in time, there’s some real juice to seeing her back and up to her old tricks again. Once again she makes a good villain, and in a mostly subtextual way, a romantic rival to Janeway.

So there’s a thrill when Seska seems to have Chakotay by the short hairs, only for the Captain to spring forth with the inter-temporal avengers from across the timeline. Current Tom, past Harry, Maquis B’Elanna, and more burst out to save the day. In a rousing moment, Bog Seven gets the Big Damn Heroes treatment. And there is something quite heartening to expend the show’s lone vision of the future on seeing Naomi Wildman and Icheb all grown up and running the ship, having come into their own. There is a collective of people here, all across time and space, who work together to save each other, knowing that it’s worth it.

That is the real thrust of this one. When seeing her dear friend Tuvok die, when realizing how many people’s lives have been affected by her decision back in “Caretaker”, Janeway rightfully wonders if she should have made a different choice. She is awed by what she witnesses teaming up with Chakotay, but she essentially asks the question: was this all worth it?

Of course, the answer is yes, and Chakotay makes an argument that tugs on the heartstrings. He argues that whatever’s been lost is made up for in what’s been gained, an improbable ship, on an incredible mission, that has resulted in discoveries, but also the type of personal growth and bonding and realization of potential that is more than worthwhile. As in “Night”, the choice to do this all again is a vindication of Janeway and of the show itself. Her affirming the path that led Chaktoay here, with friendly chefs and Borg proteges and angry rebels turned bosom friends, is also an affirmation of Voyager as a series.

It’s the kind of thing that works when a show is rounding the bend on its final stretch. I may not love every stop the writers choose to make as they skip around the timeline. But I like the central idea that motivates them, both the chance to revisit moments from Voyager’s history and the choice to use that conceit to honor the value of that journey and the stories that came with it. “Shattered” is a gimmick episode to be sure, but at heart, it’s a love letter to the last seven years. Even I, with all my compliments and criticisms over that stretch, can't help but be charmed by that.

[8.0/10] What’s funny is that I remember the Bob, Louise, and Rudy parts of this one clear as a bell, and with good reason! It’s a great storyline! It’s one of those early Bob’s Burgers episodes where the relationships hadn't been fully defined yet, and there was still some room to break tendencies and reveal new things. So the idea that Bob has more of a rebellious side, and that Louise has more of a softer side, and that they’re more alike than you might think, is a really neat place to go with “Carpe Museum.”

But what I forgot is that there are, conservatively, five story threads in this one! Some of them are just running gags, but still! This one has a quasi-season finale vibe, despite “The Unnatural” coming up next, just from the sense that everyone has something to do.

I think my favorite of them is the subplot where Linda feels separation anxiety from the kids and rushes to the museum to reunite with them, only to get caught up in the chants of the picketers outside. The notion that she just finds chants irresistible is kind of hilarious. Her chants escalating from the clever to the menacing to the weird and sexual is incredible. And my favorite moment in the whole episode may be her and Bob sprinting away from the museum for separate reasons, and yet knowing exactly why the other one is there and what they’re up to. It’s this kind of marriage telepathy that shows how well they know each other, and I love it.

The most mild of the storylines is probably Gene being paired up with Zeke. like both characters, but they’re a bit of an awkward pairing. A couple of young boys going on a “booby hunt” at the museum is on brand, and Gene not really getting it is worth a chuckle. For the most part, though, there’s just not much there.

The slightest of the storylines is Mr. Frond and the museum director flirting int he geekiest way possible. There too, there’s not much to it, but it’s both funny and low key kind of sweet, so I’ll take it.

I do like the storyline where Tina and Henry are paired up with one another for the field trip and each thinks the other is “the dork” that they need to fix. There’s something well-observed about this, both in the way that male stereotypes about dorkiness and female stereotypes about dorkiness don’t always intersect, but how each group still looks down on the other. There’s a sitcom-y but amusing sense of both kids thinking they’re “the cool one” only to realize they’re both considered dorky by everyone, so why gate-keep? And the pluralistic conclusion, that everyone’s a dork for something, is nicely wholesome.

But the crowning achievement of this one, the thing that brought me to the dance and cemented Bob’s Burgers as one of my favorite shows, is the Bob/Louise story.

I like it because it reveals, in a subtle way, that Bob was once more of a Louise. The idea that he found field trips boring and snuck away from the group and got into trouble shows that the now staid father of three had a bit of a mischief-making side once upon a time. Him enjoying the Amazon room, and indulging his daughter and her friends in a little out of bounds fun at the museum is a unique look for the character. He’s here to be a volunteer chaperone and is doing his best, but there's something wild at heart about the guy that we don’t often see.

The adventure itself is fun. I believe this was the first appearance of Regular Sized Rudy, and there wasn’t much to him at this stage. His mom is apparently no fun; he needs an inhaler, and that's about it. But even in the early going here, he’s a fun counterpart to Louise’s revelry, and the show makes great hay from the way he’s running out of breath but soldiering on in the name of fun.

That creates the stakes and the problem, as our heroes have to hide away from security guards and eventually rescue Rudy’s inhaler so they can rescue him. But it’s nice seeing Bob turn responsible and brave once a kid’s in danger, revealing that he now uses his wild side to look after the people who depend on him. That is sweet in a different way.

So is Louise’s reveal of a softer side. Not only does she look after Rudy as she’s bringing him into her fun, but the dialogue suggests that she genuinely admires her dad even if she protests the very suggestions as gross. The reveal that she envisions herself running the restaurant one day, and called Bob “daddy” until she was eight suggests that beneath the unsentimental, mischief-minded exterior of the bunny-eared kiddo, sits someone who look up to her father more than she’d admit.

Bob’s Burgers would lean more into that sort of sentiment over time, and hit higher heights. But in many ways, this is where the heart and wholesomeness beneath the endearing layers of quirk and weirdness, that would come to define the show, truly began. There’s more than I thought to “Carpe Museum”, and still a lot to like.

[7.7/10] In the same way that part one of the “Flesh and Blood” duology takes three big ideas that have been wending their way through Star Trek for ages, part two gives us three flavors of the same kind of character interaction. One of the Voyager faithful confronts an outsider with very specific expectations of them, only to discover that they are different, in many ways more, than our regular players might have imagined. It’s a good tack, and the episode uses it well, and in different ways, across the episode.

The simplest of them are the interactions between Captain Janeway and Donik, the Hirogen technician who programmed the holo-prey. In many ways, Janeway blames Donik for this situation much as she blames herself. Others on the ship write off Donik’s “just following orders” excuse, and point the finger at him for aiding and abetting the cruelly and loss of life that has been so present in this situation. There’s a simmering resentment under the surface.

Yet, Donik is not a butcher. He is an engineer, not unlike B’Elanna. And as much as Janeway is kicking herself for violating the prime directive and giving holodeck technology to the Hirogen, having seen how they perverted it, Donik is a walking talking reminder that good things came of her choice as well. If she hadn't, he would have been forced to have become a hunter like all his brethren. Thanks to her, he had an opportunity to expand what Hirogen society allowed its people to be, to do something that fit him rather than being crammed in a particular box, to develop a skill separate and apart from ritualized murder as sport. Janeway hoped to open up Hirogen society, and for at least one individual, she did.

I like that as the silver lining to a situation the Captain regrets. The fact that, at the end of things, Donik wants to stick with the holo-prey, to help them and support them, to make up for his sense of grim responsibility for what’s happened, shows that Janeway really did plant a seed in the Hirogen culture with her gift. I love that idea as a counterpoint to her self-doubt and self-flagellation. Some good came of this, and that's worth holding onto.

But my favorite character pairing in this one is B’Elanna’s interactions with Kejal, the holographic Cardassian aboard Iden’s ship. Their storyline stands on its own, with a familiar story shape of mutual mistrust blossoming into flipped expectations and mutual understanding. Still, oddly enough, this is another of the rare Voyager episodes like season 4’s “Hunters” that carries more weight if you’ve seen Deep Space Nine.

If so, you understand B’Elanna’s instinctive mistrust of a Cardassian. It may be a long time since Lt. Torres joined Voyager’s crew, but more than even Chakotay, she remains connected to her Maquis origins. She fears the sense of arrogance and militance we saw in the likes of Gul Dukat and his cronies. She fears the willingness to conquer and take other people’s homes as your own as they did with Bajor and the Demilitarized Zone. She fears a willingness to be cruel and lethal that stained the Cardassians’ legacy in the wake of the Occupation. If you wanted to get B’Elanna to trust these holograms, putting her with one in the package of her most hated enemy is less than ideal.

Yet, at the end of the day, Kejal isn’t a Cardassian. She is a hologram, one able to adapt and evolve and become something more than she was programmed to be. And while I assumed that the writers chose to have B’Elanna kidnapped simply because she makes the most sense as a hostage in this situation, there’s a deeper and defter use for her here. If anyone aboard Voyager understands wrestling with dual identities, being able to overcome a heritage you have mixed feelings about, and scratch out your own identity in the space, it’s B’Elanna. As much as she’s apt to resent Kejal, she’s also uniquely positioned to understand her.

I love that. The slow-developing trust and understanding between them, a realization that they’ve both exceeded their “programming” to follow their own path, makes sense both conceptually and on a scene-to-scene basis. It’s heartening to see B’Elanna go from angry hostage, to reluctant helper, to genuine ally and champion for Kejal. The turn happens a little quickly, but the bond between them helps justify Kejal’s “Not All Holograms” proof that she values the sanctity of life more than blind loyalty, when she helps B’Elanna and the Doctor neutralize Iden.

So when you reach the end, and Kejal and Donik go off to establish a homeworld for the holograms together, there is poetry in it. Donik is a creator of sorts, one who means to undo the harm he’s caused to a new form of life. And Kejal is a freedom fighter who’s overcome two sets of programming and dogma, one from the predators who chased her, and one from the fanatic who led her. That she finds her own path forward, buoyed by B’elanna’s friendship and encouragement, evokes one of Star Trek’s favorite themes: that every culture and community and even person contains multitudes, and that many are capable of far more than our snap judgments and prejudiced assumptions would suggest. There is nuance and complexity there that befits the franchise.

That is my major frustration with the third character pairing that takes an unexpected turn: the one between Iden and the Doctor.

“Flesh and Blood pt. II” offers some clever and even inspirational thinking from Iden. The notion that he wants to have his people settle on an inhospitable planet, because air and water and vegetation are immaterial to holograms, and it will keep their enemies away, is legitimately smart. His dreams and language for “a world of light” is lyrical and aspirational, in a way that a newly-formed people should be. And his idea of wanting a break from the cultures of the holograms’ enslavers, to forge something new and apart from it, raises interesting questions about liberation and assimilation and complicated heritage that are still being answered around the world today. There is complexity in that too.

And then “Flesh and Blood” just throws it out the window.

Sigh. It’s not enough that Iden be someone radicalized from his brutal treatment at the hands of the Hirogen who wants to free his people by any means necessary. No, instead he has to want to invent a new religion where he is a god. (And the Doctor too, in fairness.) And he has to unreasonably insist that simple basic holograms are no less oppressed than complex sapient ones and wantonly murder the strangers who’d utilize them. And he has to resort to blind vengeance and cruelty, hunting the Hirogen the same way that they once hunted him out of a need to turn the tables and inflict his bitterness and resentment on them even though it won’t accomplish anything.

Now, in more delicate hands, there could be complexity to this too. A freed slave going on a John Brown-esque liberation crusade, and how to reckon with the morality of harsh methods married to a just cause, could be riveting. The cycles of violence and abuse that emerge when one people brutalizes another, and then the children of that cruelty turn around and inflict the same brutality on those who wronged them, is an idea that has been with Star Trek for a long time. If the show meant to earnestly explore any of this, it could do well.

Instead, it plays like somebody just flipped the “evil” switch on Iden, and suddenly the Doctor has reason to be aghast at who he’s thrown his lot in with. There’s no nuance or complication to Iden once the show goes down that route.Instead, he's just a megalomaniacal villain, doing patently evil stuff along the way, in a way that flattens all the interesting ethical questions that “Flesh and Blood” set up in the first half of this two-parter.

Maybe I’m asking too much of this episode. What I was hoping for (and to be frank, what I thought “Flesh and Blood” was already doing) was to turn Iden into a single-serving version of Kira Nerys. There too, this installment plays with the expectations of viewers who’ve seen DS9. The idea of a religiously motivated Bajoran freedom fighter, who loathes the members of the culture that oppressed him with a mix of justified resentment and base prejudice, is a familiar archetype for venerable Trekkies. The writers could have made Iden extreme without making him a cartoon baddie, and the episode would have been better for it.

All that said, I like where the episode ends up. For one thing, as much as the chase and table-turning with Voyager and the holograms and the Hirogen feel a little obligatory for an action-akced two-partner, it's also exciting and well done. There are mechanical but well-staged and edited opportunities for Voyager to drift in the wake of the Hirogen, or for Doc to get a dry cool action line before eliminating the would-be folk hero he was seduced by. It’s not the headiest material in the episode, but it’s engaging enough to add some zing to the outing.

More to the point, the landing spot for all of this is good. The Doctor gets to demonstrate that his fealty to preserving life in all its forms means more to him than any loyalty to one people or another. Kejal and Donik set aside the prejudices of their peoples in the hopes of forging a sanctuary. Even good ol’ Neelix gets a moment in the sun, using his ambassador skills to convince the Hirogen Beta to leave things alone in the name of prompting a better story for him to tell to his comrades. The ending feels tidy and yet satisfying, which is a tough line to walk.

But the meat of it, the thing that stays with you, is the reunion between Captain Janeway and the Doctor.

I like a lot about their final scene together. I like that, to the end, Janeway assumed that Iden or someone else had tampered with the Doctor, because she couldn't believe Doc would willingly betray the crew like that. It speaks to how much she believed in him. I like that the Doctor doesn’t expect things to simply go back to normal, but rather offers himself up for punishment, from giving up his mobile emitter in lieu of the brig to eliminating his holodeck privileges to even reverting him to his original state. It speaks to how remorseful he is for his actions.

In the end though, the status quo is maintained. Perhaps that can be attributed to the standard entropy of network television in the year 2000. But I’d like to think there’s a deeper reason that Janeway ultimately lets Doc off the hook when she demoted and punished Tom Paris in circumstances that weren’t all that different.

Her grand lesson from all of this is that you can't try to undo or erase the choices that you’ve made in the past. If she could go back in time (and in fairness, she has), she might not give the Hirogen holographic technology, knowing what the consequences were. Regardless, though, those consequences are here. They’re staring her in the face. So now that she has a Hirogen engineer who wouldn’t exist but for her intervention, and a self-aware hologram who wants a home for her people, who is she to trample the autonomy and possibility she helped create? Once you’ve made those kinds of monumental choices, right or wrong, sometimes you have to live with them.

I’d like to think the same goes for the Doctor. He may have walked down a path that left Voyager damaged and put him on the wrong side. But Janeway has given him “extraordinary freedom”, allowed him to grow into his own person, given him values that come with a strong sense of right and wrong. How can you then blame him for following his holographic heart and doing what he thinks is right? It’s a little aspirational, a little inconsistent, but that idea works for me.

In the end, they’re the last character pairing, and the ultimate instance of each having expectations of the other, only to discover that there’s more within each of them than either one knew. That too helps to forge a new understanding, a recognition of decisions made and lives forged that can't be undone, sometimes for the worse, but in the Doctor’s case, sometimes very much for the better.

[8.2/10] The first part of “Flesh and Blood” is the culmination of three big ideas that have been running through Star Trek for a long time. The mix of them, and using The Doctor and Janeway as a lens through which to explore them, makes this one of the franchise’s more exciting beginnings for a two-partner.

The first is, naturally, the Prime Directive. This story isn’t just about the pros and cons of non-interference; it’s about responsibility and the law of unintended consequences. When Captain Janeway gave the Hirogen holodeck technology at the end of “The Killing Game”, it was a moment of hope. The idea that this tech was a means to spare the Hirogen from a cultural dead-end, a sign of generosity to an aggressor, in the hopes that they could use it to better themselves, spoke to the aspirational spirit of the Federation.

To then see it used to perpetuate, and even reinforce, the predator values of the Hirogen is both despiriting and arguably more realistic a potential result than this optimistic franchise usually countenances. I can remember my frustrations with early episodes like “Alliances” where Janeway steadfastly refused to share replicators with the Kazon out of a stubborn devotion to Starfleet protocol even if it meant listing toward destruction. But this reunion with the Hirogen is the counterpoint to that frustration -- an example of how sharing advanced tech with unknown species can lead to knock-on problems down the road you may not be able to foresee.

For Janeway, the fact that the Hirogen have created holographic training grounds for their hunters, resulting in many deaths and a small rebellion, is not just a sad result born of good intentions; it’s her mess to clean up. Her crewmates remind her that they’ve come a long way since those early days, and trading tech with alien races has been a necessity for survival. Still, to the Captain’s mind, she broke with her principles, and now there’s blood on her hands. That's a strong motivation for a leader who’s always had firm ethical lines even as she’s become more pragmatic during her time in the Delta Quadrant.

That said, the second big idea at play in “Flesh and Blood pt. 1” is one that may supersede any sense of utilitarian culpability Janeway feels for what’s happened with the Hirogen -- the hubris of tampering with holographic technology in ways that can outstrip your ability to control it.

In many ways, “Flesh and Blood” is a spiritual successor to “Elementary, Dear Data” from The Next Generation. There, Geordi asked the holodeck to create a challenge and adversary capable of beating Data, and the result was a self-aware holographic Dr. Moriarty with the drive and intellect to take over the real life starship. Here, the Hirogen aimed to craft holographic prey worthy of the hunt, and as a result, inadvertently create beings with the wherewithal to stage a rebellion, slay their overseers, and stage an escape.

The holodeck malfunction goes back as far as “The Practical Joker” from The Animated Series, but this is an order of magnitude greater. One of the great boons of the episode is it’s decision to center the plot on the notion of a whole race of Moriarties: erstwhile playthings inadvertently turned into self-aware souls who don’t want to be cabined or controlled. The choice creates practical challenges for all involved. But it also creates a philosophical debate on board Voyager, between whether Janeway is responsible for this situation by sharing the technology, or if the Hirogen are responsible for abusing it, and arguably perverting it, by choosing to misuse it in this way.

And yet, that's small potatoes compared to the major philosophical question at the heart of “Flesh and Blood”, which ties into the third big, longstanding idea driving this story -- what are the rights of artificial lifeforms?

It’s a question Star Trek took up famously (and arguably at its best), with TNG’s “The Measure of a Man”. Voyager took that baton early on with the Doctor, giving him opportunities to grow, to love, to face down his own trauma, and to decide where he wants to be like any other member of this crew. Those paths have not always been easy, and it seems like Janeway in particular has had to learn the “I’m a real boy!” lesson over and over again. But this episode eschews the narrow question of whether the Doctor is fully a person, with all that entails, and consider the broader question -- what if holograms, or at least a particular set of them, are fully a people?

(And her, for the sake of argument, let’s not fuss with the underwhelming grazing of this idea in “Bride of Chaotica” and pretend this is the first time Voyager’s addressed it.)

If Janeway is asking herself what responsibilities she has to neutralize a chain of events she started that resulted in death and conflict, the Doctor pushes her to ask the question of what responsibilities she may have to recognize and support a new form of life. He, more than anyone, is liable to sympathize with the growing holo-prey rebellion, and recognize their need to be treated as a full-fledged species like any other. That gives him a countervailing motivation that is no less potent, and no less understandable.

Sympathizing with the holo-prey is easy. Voyager smartly gives us characters to latch onto. Iden is their Bajoran leader, who prays to the Prophets, looks after his people, and recounts with harrowing frankness the horrors of his enslavement. Kejal is a softer figure for the Doctor to bond with, one aiming to heal her fellow holograms and taking her first steps down the path he’s walked down many times. The notion that the Hirogen didn’t just create these beings for their game, but made them to bleed, to suffer, to feel pain so that they could hunt and kill them over and over again, evokes a cruel waking nightmare. Who wouldn’t resist in the face of such torture?

The other side of the coin is that Iden and his crew are radicals, albeit understandable ones. Much like Dejaren in “Revulsion”, a lifetime of mistreatment and dismissal has led them to mistrust all “organics”, and view any bloodshed as righteous recompense for the brutal indignities visited upon them. Their disbelief that any organics could respect holographic life, despite Doc’s protestations, is born not only of their heartless treatment at the hands of the Hirogen, but the treatment of their kind they’ve seen elsewhere in the Delta Quadrant.

The upshot of all of this is that the Doctor once again finds himself torn between two worlds. On the one hand, he sees his homicidal holographic brethren, preaching hologram liberation and espousing the notion of a fundamental incompatibility between organics and themselves. (Shades of Laas in “Chimera” from Deep Space Nine.)

He tries to cool their tempers. Doc reassures them that not all organics are this way, that even if he doesn’t get dispensation to go off to some conference, he has rights and privileges aboard Voyager. Sure, he’s expected to tend to the wounded, and he doesn’t have separate quarters. But on Janeway’s watch, he’s been allowed to evolve, to be taken seriously as a person, and even to leave if that's what he truly wanted. His “not all organics” position stems from personal experience, and a broadening of the franchise of humanity within Starfleet that Trekkies have witnessed firsthand.

On the other hand, though, when he returns to Voyager to urge the Captain to help his holo-friends, he runs into, at best, a practicality from Janeway that sees their needs as less urgent given the exigencies of the situation, or at worst, a prejudice toward the holo-prey as less-than-equal, even disposable, in a way that their fleshy counterpart aren’t.

The boardroom scene among them is telling. It’s where the two perspectives come to clash: Janeway who fears her technological generosity has wrought deadly unintended consequences that must be rectified, and the Doctor, who fears that the enlightened friends he’s been bragging about are ready to marginalize, even sacrifice, an equally valid people whose personhood must be recognized.

Both positions are understandable. The Hirogen may be sexist brutes, but by violating protocol and interfering in their culture, Janeway feels duty bound to stop this catastrophe from worsening, let alone spreading. And the holo-prey may be radicals, but when the Doctor sees fellow souls who idolize him and are inspired by what he’s accomplished, who simply want to be able to achieve the same things he has and be free from torture and subjugation, it’s not hard for him to pick a different side in this conflict.

So he betrays Voyager in a more profound and personal way than we’ve ever seen before. As the Doctor’s evolved, he’s developed and been granted agency, autonomy, a growing right to choose his own path. The consequence of that is that sometimes, your colleagues, your friends, and indeed your children follow their own principles and values in ways that are no less sincere than yours, even if they lead them in opposite directions.

It is both rousing and sad to see the Doctor do what he feels he must here, even if it means thwarting the plans of his friends on Voyager, Janeway included, but only because he fears they do not see his friends as real people. Once again, it leads him to wonder if the allies he so vociferously defended similarly see him as lesser, another mere piece of technology that can be coopted or corralled.

Of course, this is still 1990s Trek, so what follows is a bunch of explosions, and brawl with the Hrigoen in the mess hall, and a reversing-of-the-polarity that leaves Voyager dead in the water. The skirmish gives Iden’s crew the opportunity to kidnap B’Elanna in the hopes that, after the Doctor’s praise, she can be impressed into service to repair them. (Shades of “Prototype”.) And in the midst of his grand change in allegiance, Doc has a look of “What have I done?”

In an odd way, the thing that separates the Doctor from Janeway is the thing that unites them. Much as the Captain did back in “The Killing Game”, the Doctor is violating rules and orders, but doing what he believes is, ultimately, not just the right thing, but the humane thing. It goes in directions he didn’t want, couldn't have predicted, and leaves him given to wonder if his empathy and good-intentions have been taken advantage of.

We’ll see where that takes us. If there’s a recurring theme in 1990s Trek more persistent than any other, it’s two-parters where the first half raises a ton of interesting ideas and the second half has no idea how to satisfyingly land all of them.

But if Janeway and the Doctor feels uncertain and out of sorts by the situation in front of them; they should. “Flesh and Blood” weaves together grand concepts that Star Trek has been wrestling with since at least 1989 and arguably as far back as 1966. Using them in new ways, building on episodes and choices the audiences has already seen, and realizing them through the personal drives of two of the show’s signature characters, gives Voyager the chance to explore one of the franchise’s most engrossing and challenging problems yet.

[8.1/10] Regular Sized Rudy episodes have come to be a real highlight for Bob’s Burgers. There’s something sympathetic about a kid navigating his parents’ respective relaunches after a divorce that you don’t really see much of on television. This show has the deftness and delicateness to make the situation legitimately hilarious, while also earnest and heartfelt, which is a tough line to walk.

So I like an episode like this one, centered on Rudy worrying about how his dad is coping with his mom’s new boyfriend. Rudy is relatable,resenting a genial stepparent for merely existing while wanting to defend his dad out of a fear that this new person will “step on his cocoon”. You can understand why a sensitive kid like Rudy would be protective of his dad and hesitant about his mom’s boyfriend.

The show does well to involve the Belcher kids and create a funny way to dramatize that notion, with enough low-level stakes to build the story around. Rudy’s plan to help his dad cheat at bowling to show up Paul, his mom’s beau, gives something for everyone to do. The show was fun with Rudy and Gene lucking Sylvester’s eyebrow, and Louise trying to get Paul to use his occupational therapist skills on Bob (who genuinely needs them!) to Tina convincing Sherri, Sylvester’s friend from curry class, to date him. The show finds the laughs in these goofy but grounded moments.

Along the way, there’s some good humor with Bob and Linda. The pair getting guilt-invited to Sylester’s bowling birthday is fodder for some nice situational laughs. Linda loving her bowling shoes is the kind of quirky humor I like from the show. And the throughline of Bob not remembering the first time Linda told him I love you has an appropriately demented but sweet ending.

But I especially like the climax here. The plan to cheat on Sylveerster’s behalf runs aground when Louise realizes that Sylvvester is fine, and RUdy’s the one who has a problem here. There’s a lot of amusing shenanigans to get to that point. But I appreciate how Louise is instantly on Rudy’s side in all of this, helping him rage against Paul without a second thought despite the guy’s general amiability in support of her friend. But at the end of the day, she’s also ready, willing and able to tell Rudy what he needs to hear. The realization that Sylerster isn't some delicate hothouse flower who needs to be protected, but rather is intentionally losing to Paul so as to not show him up, is a nice twist. And Louise using it as a sign to Rudy that his dad is fine, and that sticking with this plan is just going to make things weird for everyone, takes courage.

The episode lands in a nice place, with Sylverster reassuring Rudy that he’s fine, and stronger than his son thinks. Rudy relenting and trusting his dad (and, you know, talking to him) is sweet. And Sherri coming over to flirt with Sylvester, showing that he’s not so unlucky in love or incapable of attracting a partner, adds a nice win for the guy through it all.

I don't know that I want Bob’s Burgers to become the Regular Sized Rudy show or anything, but as we hit the latter stretch of this strike-addled fourteenth season, there’s a sense in which we’ve really explored the Belcher family through thick and thin. It’s not like there’s no more challenges for them to face or character traits for them to explore, but the writers have done a lot over the years.

Turning some of that spotlight over to Rudy, using it as a chance to not only explore a less-examined character, but spotlight the kind of experience you don’t see nearly as much of on television, is a win for everyone. If it results in more episodes like these -- full of laughs and full of heart -- then I say keep it coming.

[6.8/10] I owe the Voyager creative team something of an apology. My mental landmark for Harry Kim is that he’s largely unchanged over the course of the series. Part of my frustration with “The Disease” is that the script tries to make this big “I’m a man now, Mom!” point with Harry, gesturing towards a sort of growth we’d rarely, if ever on an episode-to-episode basis.

But hey! As the show moves towards its end game, they’re trying now! Jokes about Harry as a perpetual ensign aside, since “Warhead” the show has a small but significant throughline of the young man aiming to level up. Aspiration gives him a bit of character and purpose beyond “fresh-faced ensign who’s unlucky in love,” and that's all to the good.

That desire to climb the ranks and assert himself is, ostensibly, the thrust of “Nightingale”. Harry leads an away mission and seems to break protocol partly out of a sense of moral duty, but partly for the chance to get to do something cool and important while in command. He agreed to lead an alien ship on a secret mission, and jealously guards against any effort of others to interfere. This is his mission, his chance to prove himself as a captain-in-training, and by god, he wants to make the most of it.

The tack works for Harry. It’s far from the most iconic Game of Thrones line, but Jaime Lannister saying, “Young men with big jobs, they tend to overdo them” has stuck with me since I heard it. There’s something well-observed about the point, that young people thrust into areas of major responsibility often have something to prove that leads to doing too much. The blend of good intentions but a certain overeagerness is relatable, and helps make Harry’s own overzealousness both worthy of shaking your head and sympathetic.

On the one hand, it’s easy to root for the guy here. The jokes about him never getting a promotion are legion among fans, but in real life, it would be genuinely frustrating to be worthy of more but still be kept in the same place given the, shall we say, unique circumstances of your workplace. Him being tired of being Voyager’s “Buster Kincaid” is understandable, in-universe and in a meta sense. Despite some (admittedly bad) feature episodes, the character’s long felt like a member of the B-team. Wanting more than that, and reaching for it, are admirable qualities in the character.

At the same time, him leaning into the pageantry over the substance of being a captain is worthy of eye-rolls. The way he decorates his ready room, dubs a generic alien ship the titular Nightingale, and otherwise revels in the trappings of command make him seem like a kid play-acting as captain than someone actually taking the job seriously. In some ways, Harry is living his dream in miniature, and his reaction is both comprehensible and cringeworthy.

He’s not the only young man in “Nightingale” with delusions of grandeur, though. The B-story sees Icheb convinced that B’Elanna’s friendly mentorship is, in fact, a sign of romantic attraction. It’s a cute enough, lighter side comic subplot. Icheb’s feelings about B’Elanna have a real “schoolboy crush on my teacher” brand of misreading signals that is kind of sweet. And B’Elanna realizing that the young ex-Borg can't be reasoned with, and so leans into his “We simply can't keep seeing one another” conclusion is an amusing enough ending.

Here’s the funny thing, though -- between B’Elanna’s reaction when Icheb helped her solve a problem in Engineering, and the way she encouraged him to leave the cargo bay and hit up the mess hall and holodeck, I though she was being oddly flirty with him! I thought I was crazy!

I assume Roxann Dawson was just playing it up for the purpose of the storyline. But as intentionally ludicrous as it is for Icheb to think this grown, married woman is harboring a crush on him, the way Dawson played the scenes made me raise an eyebrow before I realized where the story was going, so it’s hard to blame Icheb for picking up something odd there too! Given Voyager’s...less-than-great history with May-December romances, I’m still glad they play Icheb’s misimpression for laughs.

I’m less enamored with how they play Harry’s predicament. I thought the show was setting up something trite but true in Harry’s overdoing it mixed with Seven’s chastening. It would have been a little sitcom-y, but solid if Harry turns out to be a micromanager who can't delegate, and eventually learns to trust his people and learn about leading instead of just doing when the situation forces him to reevaluate. The way he becomes a mentor to the alien crewman, guiding the young man the same way Janeway once guided him, would work as a vehicle for that.

Instead, we get a frankly kind of bizarre story, where Harry screws up royally, gets mutinied when he finds out the aliens’ secret plan, helps them anyway, and then maybe commits a war crime? You had me for a minute, Voyager, and then you throw it all the way.

Suffice it to say, the end game of “Nightingale” leaves a lot to be desired. The whole “I messed things up in my young officer hubris” lesson goes out the window when it turns out the aliens aboard the ship don’t turn on him because he’s a bad leader, but rather because he uncovered that they’re hauling cloaking technology for war rather than life-saving vaccines for an errand of mercy.

Now in fairness, I don’t mind that turn in the story. I thought “Nightingale” was going someplace interesting with that. Harry got involved in a local conflict when protocol dictated otherwise. He overlooked red flags because he wanted this mission. Not only does that choice come back to bite him personally, but it screws things up for Janeway being able to get deuterium injectors and dilithium from the civilization that Harry’s allies are warring with.

A lesson not to let your personal ambition cloud your good judgment, one that perhaps calls upon Harry to rely on Seven and his alien protege, rather than micromanage and order around both of them, could have been a great place for this episode to land.

Instead, we get some half-baked excuse that the aliens smuggling the cloaking technology need it to prevent their enemies from “choking” them to death, and boom, Harry’s convinced and on their side again. Look, I get it. When fellow star-traveler Ron Glass tells you something, it’s inherently convincing. But it’s baffling to me that Harry would nigh-instantly side with people who deceived both him and Janeway about their true intentions, and that we’re supposed to think they’re still the good guys despite their duplicitous behavior? The whole thing feels off, and Harry seems like a double dupe for continuing to go along with that.

(Hell, at one point, I kind of assumed the twist would be that Harry’s allies were the aggressors in the war, and the hated Inari were, in fact, the more amiable group in the conflict. But, uh, nope. I guess?)

If that weren’t enough, once Harry realigns himself with the Kraylor, his big move is to commit a false surrender. And look, I’m no expert in the laws of war. And Harry doesn’t attack the Inari post-surrender; he just escapes. But still, my understanding is that the whole false surrender thing is considered pretty egregious, if for no other reason than that it discourages warring parties from accepting or countenancing genuine offers of surrender in the future. So the big strategic move that's supposed to show Harry’s ready for the big chair is a war crime that instead seems to suggest that he needs a lot more seasoning.

Nonetheless, even if the trajectory here leaves a lot to be desired, it’s just nice for Harry to have a direction. In truth, I still don’t expect the character to change a ton between here and the end of the series. In fairness to the creative team, Garrett Wang isn’t the show’s best performer, and he’s a lot more plausible here as an overeager ensign than he is when called upon to do bigger emotions like anger and dejection.

But every player on Voyager has potential. Every actor can be used well. And providing Harry with a personal goal, one that the show seems to at least seems to remember from episode to episode, goes a long way toward finally developing him. He may never be a captain, but there’s still plenty of time left for Harry Kim to become a good character.

[7.8/10] Star Trek: Voyager is not a very thirsty show. I don’t mean that as a criticism exactly. It’s just not Voyager’s vibe. There’s plenty of romantic elements on the show, from Tom and B’Elanna’s engagement to the courtly love between Chakotay and Kathryn, to the Doctor’s crush on Seven. But for the most part, everything in the series is very chaste.

There are exceptions. Janeway had a charged courtship with a Sikarian back in “Prime Factors”, and Harry Kim caught the cupid’s arrow of venereal diseases in “The Disease”. These are few and far between though. Whether it’s the demands of network television in the late 1990s/early 2000s, or simply the stately sensibilities of Star Trek in this era, desire is just not a well the show went too very often.

That makes an episode like “Body and Soul”, which is practically overflowing with sexual energy, such an interesting anomaly. Tuvok is thirsty. The Doctor is thirsty. The alien captain of the week is thirsty. The Doctor is pretending to be Seven pretending to be thirsty for the alien captain. The whole episode isn’t a sex comedy exactly. There’s a little too much going on under the hood for that, if you’ll pardon the expression. But it’s not far off either.

That's fun! As Voyager makes headway into its seventh season, and Nineties Trek extends into its thirteenth year, it’s nice to get a kind of wild episode that breaks the formula and upends our expectations for what the show can be. Body-swap farce with a series of hidden identities, a smidgeon of earnestness and headiness, and a heap of, well, horniness, is a different look for Voyager. And after more than one-hundred and fifty episodes on the air, different is good!

The premise does a lot of the work here. Hologram-hating aliens who attack the Delta Flyer on an away mission make for a good excuse for the Doctor to have to find somewhere, anywhere to hide. If I have a major complaint with the episode, it’s that the show creates a really interesting concept with the holo-bigoted Lokirrim, that it doesn’t truly explore.

The notion of a holographic slave rebellion, where flesh-and-blood people are aghast that their house slaves would turn on them, little realizing that the meatbags are subjugators not victims, is a rich and fascinating one. Jaryn’s conversation about how her hologram was like a member of the family, until they weren’t, is engrossing in and of itself. There’s so much to dig into there (shades of everything from “Prototype” to TNG’s “The Measure of a Man”, and even The Orville), but the episode mostly uses it as an excuse for the Doctor to find any port in a storm with a touch of the usual “holograms are people too” moral.

Still, the decision to have the Doctor be forced to inhabit Seven’s body is absolutely inspired. The episode plays an odd sort of irony between him and Seven through the experience. The Doctor is well-met epicurean incapable of truly tasting, smelling, or feeling, and Seven is a flesh-and-blood human whose Borg-bound disposition keeps her from many of life’s pleasures. You have to turn your brain off a bit to buy the “holomatrix + Borg implants = body swap” conceit, but the fun, humanity, and perspective-flipping insights of the way Doc revels in his pleasures of the flesh and Seven recoils at him taking her body out for a bit of a cavalier joyride is more than worth it.

Not for nothing, I’d go so far as to say this is Jeri Ryan’s best performance in the series to date. We’ve seen Seven leave her stoicism behind a few times, and the results have been nothing to write home about. Her multiple personalities in “Infinite Regress” and her more “natural” state in the titular “Unimatrix Zero” weren’t especially convincing. Ryan has seemingly done better by injecting subtle bits of emotion amid her character’s usual Borg detachment, like the outstanding performance she gave just a few episodes back in “Imperfection”.

And yet, “Body and Soul” calls for a big performance from the actress, and she absolutely nails it. Not only does Ryan rise to the occasion nigh-effortlessly in taking on a much more expressive, emotive, and all around more exaggerated character, she is almost eerily convincing in conveying Robert Picardo’s affect and mannerisms as The Doctor. It would be so easy for this type of performance to come off like too much or, at worst, not believable. Instead, Ryan knocks it out of the park, to the point that at times, you forget that it’s Seven, not the actress, who’s inhabited by the Doctor’s personality, which speaks to the perfection of her approach to a challenging role.

She’s not the only performer on the show breaking tendencies in “Body and Soul”, though. As in “Meld”, there’s something inherently attention-grabbing about seeing the likewise typically stoic Tuvok barely holding it together. His subplot here is a much lower stakes follow-up to the pon farr-related issues with Ensign Vorik and B’Elanna from back in “Blood Fever”, one of the few other Voyager episodes to delve deeply into not just love but sexual desire.

I appreciate that! Tuvok is not a young man experiencing his first bout of hormones like Vorik was. He is, instead, a committedly centered and deeply private man who nevertheless experiences a physical condition he cannot hide or control. There’s some goofy moments about an oblivious Neelix trying to soothe his Vulcan friend with broth, or the holodeck having to be shut down right as he’s ready to sate his urges. But there’s also some sympathy and humanity to the story.

I appreciate the fact that, despite Tom’s frat house ribbing, he respects Tuvok’s privacy about a sensitive matter as both a medic and a friend. I appreciate that Janeway likewise recognizes what’s really going on, and tries to give her dear friend time off so as not to force him to gut this out, while keeping it under wraps. And most of all, I appreciate that for all his physical struggles, Tuvok is a married man and takes his vows seriously, wrestling not just with his urges but with a desire to stay faithful to his wife.

This isn’t exactly “Gravity” with the show balancing Tuvok’s loyalty with his immediate needs, but there’s a lot to be said for Tuvok only being able to grant himself relief if it comes in the form of a holographic recreation of his spouse. (Replete with sensual Vulcan finger-touching a la “The Enterprise Incident” from The Original Series!) You feel Tuvok’s frustration through this difficult experience, but also the loving soul beneath the emotionless exterior, who can't deny his sexual urges but who also refuses to feed them in a way that would dishonor the person he loves. The mix of the natural and noble there elevates the B-story to one of Tuvok’s nicest moments in the spotlight, despite the series squandering other opportunities.

If that were the only part of the episode centered on a character being almost terminally thirsty, you could write it off as a quirk of that particular story. But it’s also a major part of the Doctor/Seven A-plot.

As has been long (if not well) established, the Doctor is attracted to Seven. So when he blips into her body, there’s peculiar moments where he pretends to be her, waxing rhapsodic about how much she admires him that verges on a strange form of self-flattering fantasy. And if that weren’t enough, he’s attracted, and even aroused, by Jaryn, the ship’s lieutenant who’s not interested in Doc-as-Seven because he has the appearance of a woman. But then the EMH also has to fend off the advances of Ranek, the ship’s captain, who feels amorous toward Doc-as-Seven, but whom the EMH isn’t interested in (with implications that it’s because of gender). And if that weren’t enough, then he has to pretend to seduce Ranek while masquerading as Seven so he can slip the guy a sedative and call Voyager.

It’s kind of a mess, but in a fascinating sort of way. This isn’t the usual sex farce where a tangle of different vixens and lotharios have conflicting and intersecting crushes on one another with pursuits and disappointments galore. This is a mish-mash of attraction and gender and the new physical and the unexpected emotional elevates “Body and Soul” into something more than the usual romp. It’s a sci-fi twist, suffused with both desire and a breaching of new personal horizons, that feels like a more transcendent story that only speculative fiction can tell.

This is where I admit that I’m not necessarily fully qualified to judge this one. My knowledge of body-swap stories extends about as far as Freaky Friday and its progeny, and not much further. But I have enough nonbinary and transgender friends and acquaintances to know that magical/sci-fi gender-swapping stories, both amorous and otherwise, have a long history in that community.

They can serve as a canvas for exploration of feelings and notions that don’t always find purchase in the mainstream, and sometimes as an outlet for sexual desires to be explored in a safe guise. I don’t know enough to unpack everything going on with the Doctor in “Body and Soul”, but I know enough to recognize that there’s a number of those conceits and ideas at play here.

That's a neat thing for a show as staid as Voyager is much of the time. There’s a good “double-agent escapes captivity” story here, as Doc, Seven, and Harry scheme to contact their home vessel. There’s also a personal angle to the whole thing, with the Doctor having to play a role out of necessity only to discover that he likes it and didn’t know what he was missing. (Shades of Odo in “Facets” from Deep Space Nine, another body-swap episode that happens to feature a character who’s often read a trans allegory.)

But this is also an episode about a bunch of people having attractions to others where the person they’re after on the inside doesn’t naturally match what’s on the outside. This isn’t the first time Star Trek’s examined that kind of idea, but to mix and match desire and identity like that provides for a certain boldness that I don’t necessarily expect from Voyager.

In the end, of course, the Doctor and Seven save the day, partly as themselves and partly in their combined form. (Sorry, Tuvix.) But despite some touch-and-go moments, when it’s over, everyone’s better for the experience. Through the mismatched romantic carousel, the Doctor has a chance to point out that the people Ranek and Jaryn have been looking for are one another. And in their closing meal together, Seven takes the lesson to indulge a little, and the Doctor gets a chance to experience that sort of human pleasure vicariously with her.

Some of what the Doctor gets to experience is physical: taste, touch, sense, smell. Some of it is sexual, kissing and massages and even the stately waltz. But some of it is simply experiential, the chance to walk in someone else’s shoes, see the world from their vantage point, have your perspective widened from the opportunity. Neither Voyager nor Star Trek as a whole often goes for something this steamy, but both tend to go for the idea of seeing from another’s point of view. Mixing those two ideas -- empathy and desire -- makes for one of the show’s most rich and interesting hours yet, as the series breaks form in its last year on the air.

[8.0/10] Seven’s path toward individuality over the past three seasons has been a rocky one, but not a lonely one. Janeway, The Doctor, and scores of others (including even Naomi Wildman) have had a hand in bringing her along toward reasserting her humanity. She has friends on this ship. People care about her. Collectively, and individually, they want her to succeed, and they want her to get better.

And yet, when she faces a terminal illness, she can't see that. If anything, she strives to isolate herself from the others aboard Voyager. That is hard to watch in places, but it’s one of my favorite conceits in “Imperfection”, because it is so true to life for so many.

As in so much of the best of Star Trek, the premise is fantastical but the core of the experience is rooted in truth. Seven’s “cortical node”, a Borg device critical for regulating her vital systems, is malfunctioning. Without a working one, her body will shut down and die. No good substitutes are readily available, despite a dangerous salvage operation in a Borg debris field, and nothing The Doctor or B’Elanna can do will change that. On paper, that's one of those futuristic technology-specific problems that only exist in the world of speculative fiction.

Yet, at the heart of “Imperfection” is the experience of being grievously ill, both for the person diagnosed and for their friends and family. The presentation is a bit overly tidy in places, but the episode captures the desperate attempts by loved ones to comfort and care for someone sick. It captures the tangle of diagnoses and treatment options that can offer hope and disappointment in equal measure.

And most of all, it captures the way so many at the center of such situations strive not to be a burden, to preemptively cushion the blow of those they’re leaving behind, even if it’s the last thing those close to them would want or ask for. The truth at the heart of “Imperfection” is a palpable one, born of real experiences, and able to make the fantastical feel real.

Beyond that theme, the nuts and bolts of the episode are quality. The script establishes the problem with Seven early, steadily escalates it, and neatly weaves together emotional responses and progressive efforts to find a cure. The escape where Janeway scavenges a used cortical node and runs into the love children of the Klingons and the Kazon is a little perfunctory, but shows the character acting rationally to pursue the most obvious solution to the issue at hand. And the makeup and effects team shine here, with visual indicators of Seven’s degradation and a few Borg surgery scenes that catch the eyes.

But the core of this one is the emotional reaction of Seven and those around her to this news. The ailing ex-Borg’s response is particularly true-to-life. Her desire to get out of sick bay and return to her normal life, despite the need for rest and tests, will be familiar to anyone who’s tended to convalescing loved ones. (The reverse psychology scene with Neelix and his game of kadis-kot is especially on point there.) So is her denial that anything serious is wrong until the impact of the illness is undeniable. And the most piercing element of her experience is the way she begins to contemplate what her absence from this world will mean, for her and for those she’s felt responsible for and indebted to over several years.

That's why my favorite scene in the whole episode is between Seven and someone she’d hardly consider a friend. The relationship between Seven and B’Elanna has long been a frosty one. So there’s power in Lt. Torres harboring Seven, knowing what it’s like to want to break out from sickbay. You feel for the typically unsentimental Seven, asking her colleague what she thinks of the afterlife. You’re heartened when the Doctor tracks them down, and B’Elanna nets Seven a much-needed hall pass to help out in Engineering.

The mere fact that these testy coworkers are confiding in one another and showing each other kindness has more impact from the way this dire, unusual situation softens each toward the other.

But the most meaningful part comes when Seven contemplates the idea that if she dies, all that she’s achieved since breaking away from the Collective, all that she's become in her own right, will be lost to the sands of time. As harsh as the notion of the Borg hive mind, there is an intuitive comfort in the idea that your memories, some piece of who you were and your experiences, will live on in that collective consciousness. None of us know what that's like exactly, but the fear of being erased and forgotten in death is a relatable one, and it betrays some vulnerability and emotion from the typically stoic ex-Borg. (With some great subtle acting from Jeri Ryan to boot.)

The turn in the story’s themes come not from one of Seven’s closest friends or confidantes, but from someone she’s butted heads with time and again. B’Elanna reassures Seven that even if the cybernetic hive mind may not mark her growth over the past three years, the crew of Voyager will. Torres tells her ailing counterpart that she’s made an impact on everyone on the ship, which will carry on her memory in a different, but no less potent way.

The reassurance is all the stronger, all the more piercing, coming from someone who’s not exactly been warm with Seven to this point. That is the power in putting characters at odds with one another -- it makes it meaningful when the walls tumble down in a way more reassurance from close companions can't match in the same way. B’Elanna doesn’t have to say this. She’s not the type to just baselessly assuage Seven’s concerns. She does it because it’s true, and a benediction coming from her means more than one from almost anyone else.

In truth, I wish we got a few more of them. As much as The Doctor is a major part of this episode given the medical procedures at play, I wish he got a scene about preemptively missing Seven. Given how much her relationship with Naomi Wildman was a consistently charming part of the series over the last couple years, I wish the two got a moment together. But this episode is already trying to cover a lot of ground, and I understand not being able to insert these scenes without making the hour about that in some ways.

In that spirit though, there’s a continuing motif that Seven has forged connections with those aboard Voyager in a way even she doesn’t recognize. The show understandably jettisons three-fourths of the Borg babies (and it’s a shame to lose the spunky Mezoti, though she was a little redundant of Naomi), but closes with a touching hug among them. Seven’s surrogate mother, Janeway, and two of her crewmates, risk their lives to save the former Borg once again. Janeway’s even willing to violate her moral principles and harvest a node from a living drone if it means preserving the bonds her protege has formed.

Despite that, Seven misunderstands her relationship with her mentor. There’s something sad yet characteristic about how Seven thinks Janeway will be upset if she dies, but only because it will mean that Seven is an unfinished project. There’s pathos in worrying that you will be remembered for your failed potential, for failing to live long enough to live up to others’ expectations, than for who you are. Seven remembering the names of those lost in Voyager’s journey, and measuring herself as lesser in comparison, is a sad sort of personal reflection that nevertheless feels real.

Instead, of course, Janeway reassures her that she’s not fighting for Seven as a project, but as a friend. It is hard to accept that you mean something to people. It’s all too easy to believe that you only have instrumental value, some function you perform that will need to be substituted, rather than intrinsic value as a person who brings light into other lives. In a sense, Seven still sees herself as a drone, someone whose role within this collective will simply need to be filled. But eventually, she comes to see herself as a person, someone whose presence means more to the people in her life than any set of duties or mentoring objectives could match. The beauty of that, in realizing that you matter, not just what you achieve or accomplish, is profound.

Of course, the cinch of “Imperfection” is Icheb. And let’s get this out of the way -- Manu Intiraymi isn’t very good in the role. He was twenty-two at the time, so you can't offer the same “Being a young performer is hard” excuse you might offer for the useless Borg twins who depart the show here. He overplays most of his scenes, and fails to thread the needle between stoicism and sentiment that Jeri Ryan had nearly perfected by this point. It’s a drag for a character who’s crucial to this story.

Still, as on the page at least, I love the dynamic between him and Seven here. Once again, we see Seven take on a parental dynamic with Icheb. She doesn’t want to worry him with her illness, but does try to prepare him for life without her. She pushes him away, in asnese, in the guise of ihm needing tobecome more el-fsufficient, with the idea that it will help cushion the blow of her loss. The writers smartly illustrate that with her plan to to support his admission to a sort of Starfleet Academy remote program, but refusing to agree to tutor him in astrometrics. She is preemptively putting up walls in the hopes that it will make her loss easier for everyone.

Icheb is there to break those walls down. On the one hand, I can appreciate the clockwork nature of his plan to give her his cortical node. The script smartly sets up that only a living donor will do, so it works in terms of the immediate plot. Icheb’s point that he’s younger, hasn’t been as fully assimilated given being released from his maturation chamber early, and has found a genomic treatment that could allow him to recover accords with continuity from “Collective” and “Child’s Play”. And it ties into the real life instances of children donating organs to their parents, despite certain risks, out of a profound sense of love.

On the other, I appreciate that it’s only half the battle. The plot points are all sound, with The Doctor refusing and Icheb forcing everyone’s hand on his own initiative. But what I appreciate most is that it’s not just about finding a technical solution to a technical problem; it’s about helping Seven to see that she is not a burden, but part of a community of people who want to help her, and that accepting that help is a part of her journey.

There is dual resonance in that idea too. It works within the notion that the spirit of Janeway’s ship is one of mutual cooperation nd support, where people sacrifice for one another in the same of care and connection. But it also speaks to our reluctance to impse on others when we’re ill, to want to take on everything ourselves, when sometimes what we need the most is to be open to others doing what they can for us.

When Seven hears the wisdom from the mouths of babes and relents to the procedure, it’s a wonderful, heartwarming moment of letting go and trusting those who care about you. Of course it works out. Of course Seven recovers, and Icheb suffers some, but is on the road to wellness too. This is, at heart, an optimistic show. But “Imperfection” earns that happy ending, with true to life roadblocks both practical and personal, and an emotional breakthrough that's as important as any technical innovation.

In the end, it feeds into the great irony of Seven’s journey to this point. The path from er time as a drone to her gradually asserting herself as an individual has been one of steadily shedding the Collective’s mindset. Figuring out what she wants, what she needs, who she is apart from the cacophony of voices in her head, has been the essential struggle from where she started to where she is now.

“Imperfection” reverses that. Having forged a separate and distinct identity for herself aboard Voyager, the episode underscores that the next great step is to realize that she is not alone or apart, but once again bonded, in a more honest and chosen fashion, to others within a larger community who are no less connected or dependent on one another than the Borg are.

To open yourself to that idea -- that you need other people and they need you -- is a vulnerable one. Seven’s genuine tear at Icheb’s sacrifice, and the realization that she’ll be around to watch her child grow up, speak to that. And it is a sign as far as Seven’s come, as much as she’s achieved to carve out a place for her own identity out of the monolith of the Borg, accepting that she’s once again part of something greater than herself, full of people who love her for who she is, may be her biggest step toward humanity yet.

[7.7/10] I’m glad that Voyager made sustained contact with the Alpha Quadrant, but I’m also glad it didn’t happen until the final phase of the series. The occasional missive from home letting our heroes know their friends are still there isn’t bad. But making it a regular thing would cheapen the sense of Janeway and company being stranded with no one to rely on. The show already shied away from its premise more than enough; diminishing the sense of their connections to home having been severed would have been no good.

But giving us an anchor in the Alpha Quadrant -- in the form of Lt. Barclay, Counselor Troi, Admiral Paris, and Commander Harkins -- allows Voyager to tell a different kind of story. Establishing that corner of the universe means that both Janeway’s team and Barclay’s can be working on the problem: of missing holograms and geodesic folds and possible traitors in their midst. But the “one data stream per month” limitation means that they’re each attacking the problem without the other’s help. We get to see two devoted, clever crews, working hard on what neither of them realizes is two sides of the same issue.

So Janeway and her crew sidle up to a holographic version of Barclay dubbed “Reg” who seems on the up-and-up, but harbors a few irregularities that give folks like The Doctor pause, even if he can't prove anything. And the flesh-and-blood Barclay puzzles over the fact that his attempt to send a hologram to Voyager hasn’t worked for two months in a row, and he suspects something nefarious is afoot, even if he can't prove anything.

That's what ties the two halves of “Inside Man” together. This is as much an episode about psychology as it is the machinations of venal Ferengis or false hope for getting home or portals between giant stars. On both sides of the galaxy, something seems off, and the writers are as interested in exploring those instincts and insecurities as they are in bringing a simmering plot to a boil.

I like it! On the U.S.S. Voyager side of things, the episode toys with the idea that this is too good to be true. A holographic rendition of Voyager’s best friend in the Alpha Quadrant shows up with a plan to get them home by the end of the week? Where have we heard that before?

I appreciate an in-universe acknowledgment of that. The show has played with “Lucy with the football” game with its audience for a long time now. Having Harry harbor hopes for returning home is sympathetic, although Tom being skeptical after their misadventure with Arturis and interstellar pitcher plants and other false starts is even more understandable. There’s a bit of a meta quality to this, with the show winking at its own tropes and structure, and I appreciate the acknowledgement of that reality in an episode that plays with many of the same tropes.

That extends to the sense that much of what Reg has to offer and the presence he cuts aboard the ship smacks of wish-fulfillment. He’s not quite as bad as the pitcher plant, but the promise of coming home, his easy manner with the crew, his declaration of Voyager as the “miracle ship” seem like the actions of a conman more than an honest broker working on the ship’s return.

Thankfully, the show puts a fig leaf on Reg’s presence, for the crew and for the audience, so Janeway and her compatriots don’t seem like dopes for falling for it. Sure, Reg seems a little too slick, but he also feels very much like the confident, genial version of Barclay we saw in the Voyager holodeck simulation back in “Pathfinder”. It’s easy to buy this uber-competent hologram as Barclay programming his imagined best self.

Likewise, there’s a meta quality to this. We know that Barclay’s Voyager’s biggest fan, to an obsessive degree, so it’s natural that his holographic counterpart would be an enthusiastic cheerleader for them. And the writing of his character mirrors fan reactions, with excitement for the ship and the crew as characters on a pedestal as much as for real people.

That extends to Seven. The idea that she is the “star” for folks back home has a winking quality to the characters’ popularity among viewers. But it also speaks to the sense that Reg is telling people what they want to hear, what will convince them to cooperate, what will charm them, so that when the Doctor questions the effectiveness of the radiation innoculations or Seven doubts the fortitude of the shields, they’ll be too wowed and flattered to really push back.

It makes for an interesting tension. The show offers breadcrumbs on the Voyager side nicely, with enough reason for doubt and enough vetting and urgency from the crew to make their buy-in plausible. But “Inside Man” does a nice job of making Doc the doubter, mixing legitimate reasons for him to become skeptical of Reg with more petty grievances like hogging the mobile emitter and spending time with the Doctor’s crush. By that point in the story, we know what’s happening. But there’s enough dust in the air there, quite deliberately, to give Janeway a “trust but verify” approach that leads to an outright apology from the EMH.

The ambiguity there makes for an interesting motif here. Both the Doctor and Barclay sense something is wrong, but question their own intuitions, wondering if it may be their own personal failings rather than something legitimately wrong. For each of them, though, the broken friendship they’re inclined to pin on their own bruised egos are, instead, a genuine sign that something nefarious is under way.

I’m not sure what the moral is exactly. Believe your worst impulses about people you feel something hinky from, I guess? Regardless, the way Barclay and Doc’s experiences mirror each other in a way shows that, even when separated by tens of thousands of lightyears, the essential human problems remain strikingly similar.

Barclay’s position is a little different. He’s been had, and in the “No guys, I think that stripper really likes me” sort of way. Things get a little wacky back in the Alpha Quadrant, between Barclay invading Troi vacation, and him being tricked by a shifty dabo girl, and Deanna using her Betazoid powers to interrogate the lascivious grifter.

There is, nonetheless. Something real at the heart of the story. Barclay was riding high on the success of the Pathfinder project. He’d gotten an attaboy from Geordi. He’d built something to help his friends across the galaxy. And he even had a girlfriend. The self-blame when it all goes to pot is sympathetic. He doesn’t want to admit or accept that the downfall of his project could be from him being so flattered himself that he didn’t see the con being wreaked upon him. In a strange way, he’s just like Harry, finding something too good to be true but wanting to believe in it hard enough that you let yourself get tricked.

In truth, I don’t love the answer to the mystery. Outside of “False Profits”, Voyager has been far less devoted to Some Ferengi Nonsense:tm: than either The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. So frankly, the addition of the well-lobed antagonists feels a little tonally dissonant. Still, there’s a certain logic to them commandeering Starfleet’s transmissions to Voyager and devising a way home whose only downside is that it’ll kill everyone on board, which doesn’t matter when all you’re interested in is nanoprobes.

As outlandish as the Ferengi’s involvement is, there’s some sound plotting to the whole thing. The geodesic fold is plausible enough as a method of return, with a hook for the Ferengi that prompts them not to care about the risks or consequences. After so many instances of false hopes and tricks, Janeway is appropriately enthusiastic but measured about the whole thing. And Barclay isn’t the lone man with a dream again, but rather someone who has to endure some personal humiliation in the name of a greater good to show his theory is right.

I like the solution on both ends. Barclay posing as “Reg” to the Ferengi, fibbing to convince them to close the fold and save Voyager, is a nice way for him to prove his worth once again and get back at the people who wronged him. And on the Voyager side, Seven’s suspicions and Jaenway’s quick thinking manage to ultimately outsmart the people trying to hoodwink her and her crew. Neither side knows about the other’s heroics (or at least won’t for another month), but each is unwittingly working together to thwart the same enemy.

That's a neat approach, and one we couldn't really get until recently in the show. The risk of finding this link back home is that it could turn Voyager into “The Adventures Back in the Alpha Quadrant.” Frankly, in the few Barclay episode’s we’ve had since the show first forged that connection, it does feel like Janeway’s set takes a backseat to the familiar characters from TNG, which wouldn’t be great as a week-to-week thing.

But as an occasional treat, where we get to see two sets of officers, unable to coordinate, nevertheless working in sync against a common enemy, makes for a great story. As Voyager heads toward its endgame, the show brings them closer and closer to home in spirit, even if there remains a great distance still to travel.

[7.4/10] Maybe I’m just scarred by The Wire and Broadchurch, but I instinctively roll my eyes when a T.V. show gets on the high horse of “news coverage ain’t what it used to be.” And I think that's partly the point Babylon Berlin wants to make here. When Katelbach grouses that we used to have “readers” and now we just have “lookers”, it’s the sort of “man, I miss the good old days” observation that seems especially trite when it’s in a story set nearly a century ago.

But there’s a point when the blustery newspaper editor makes the point that people want drama, jealousy, intrigue, revenge on the front page. And a splashy murder of a starlet fits the bill, while the more serious and substantive story of a major company supporting a military coup takes a backseat because it doesn’t have good enough pictures to go with it. We’re encouraged to tsk tsk at a fickle, shallow society more interested in silver screen blood spatter than major world events. And it comes with the subtle implication that this kind of superficial distraction is part of what allowed this society to slip into the grip of the Third Reich.

And yet, it’s hard not to feel the same way about this episode as a whole. In truth, when Rath and Charlotte are skulking around the movie set, it feels like a different show. Gone is the true political element and the story of recovering from war and the other lived-in corners of Berlin society that have come to the fore. In their place is a pulpy story of mob violence and backstabbing actresses and a black clad slasher who’s practically out of Halloween. (Hell, the closing score is pretty close to that movie’s famous musical motif.)

It’s almost as though Babylon Berlin is daring us to do the same. In truth, I can't pretend I’m super invested in the on-set mystery. I’m sure the answer will surprise us, but for now, I don’t really care about the various actors and directors and producers and costumers and techies and the like who are flitting about this new ecosystem. They’re a bit onenote, and even when one starlet is Weinstraub’s mistress, and a costuming assistant is friends with the lighting tech who was killed, it doesn’t do much for me.

But there’s something to be said fo the visual verve of it. As silly as I find the person dressed up in the Demon of Passion” getup who’s going around killing people, the imagery of it is striking. So are the musical numbers and screen tests we get to see, which ably represent that era of German cinema. And the pressure on set, where one person is trying to make art, and the other is just trying to make money, with the threat of violence and ruin hanging over them both, gives it a particular flavor. There’s flash to all of this, and it’s hard to deny that, even if it feels comparatively hollow relative to some of the show’s meatier storylines.

There are a few human moments though. Something about the producer and Edgar’s wife bonding and commiserating over what to do makes for an oddly sweet moment. You do feel for the producer, wrapped up in all of this through (seemingly) no fault of his own. But he also went in with the mob to try to fund his artistic dream. That's equally noble and stupid, and so him scrambling to make this ramshackle production work and keep his life at the same time does have a human dimension.

(Some pure speculation on my part: My semi-random guess is that Edgar’s wife is behind the deaths in the production. She holds a grudge against the producer and her husband, and could maybe want to ruin him so she can collect the estate or lie off her brother or maybe just get Edgar out of the way so she can shack up with Weintraub. Shot in the dark, but it would be a twist, and the way they focus on her here feels like foreshadowing.

Still, the stuff away from the murder investigation is more striking. I’m still not exactly over the moon for Greta, but man, something about Wendt using her baby as leverage so she’ll change her story and implicate the Communists is so heartless and full of pathos that you can't help but feel for the girl. You also feel for Helga, who rightfully all but begs Gereon to tell her what’s wrong, and is de facto pushed out of his life instead. I get that Gereon is riddled with guilt now for what happened with his brother, but however hard it is, Helga deserves better from him than this, if only an outright admission and apology that he’s not capable of continuing.

I’m still not crazy about her shacking up with Nyssen, but I guess we’ll see where that goes. As someone who lived through the Great Recession (and enjoys The Big Short), it’s interesting to see both a montage of a private eye uncovering how scores of common people are overleveraged in their investments with the idea that the stock market will continue to rise indefinitely, and how for all his seemingly poor instincts for business, Nyssen foresees the crash. The guy has new dimensions we get to see; I’ll give him that.

Otherwise, it is interesting to see Katelbach get his secret plans from an informant through slick means, which hopefully means something to the paper. And I like how the uptight forensic specialists is initially excited at his findings in the Betty WInter case, but through Rath’s personal issues and the chief’s outright dressing down, he feels marginalized in his job and would rather make money or do something illicit with his break in the case than use it to help his fellow policeman. The contrast between the chief’s insistence that the system only works with structure, while the forensic specialist is an object lesson in how overly-rigid, dehumanizing systems fail when they fail to recognize the people they cram into boxes, is potent.

Otherwise, I like the idea that this murder makes for strange bedfellows. Gereon and Edgar are united in common purpose, not just a mutual indebtedness to the man who helped heal their PTSD, but a mutual desire to know who would want to wreck this production. That too is a little pulpy, but it’s also compelling, and full of potential based on both plot and character. When it’s done right, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of flash, so long as we’re not missing out on the substance.

[6.3/10] There’s a small but recurring category of Star Trek episodes that you could label, “This should have been an essay.” If the writers wanted to criticize the American healthcare industry circa the year 2000, they had plenty of fodder for it. But “Critical Care” is so high-handed and cartoonish in its fantastical depiction of that system that the whole thing starts to feel like a Chick Tract. This is less a story than a thinly-veiled jeremiad about hospitals and HMOs of the time, and the blend between message and story is about as natural as a duck playing the piano.

The episode does have some strong core observations. The sometimes maddening allocation of medical resources remains a problem. Many byzantine systems to determine care and cost persist to this day. Instances where various players have to game the system to stay solvent or provide adequate care or both continue in many places. Trying to dramatize that through the lens of science fiction is by no means wrong-headed.

But my god, everything is so goofy here. The comical distance between the pristine “blue level” where important people get age-defying treatments and the “red level” where unfortunate schmucks can't get life-saving treatments put too big a thumb on the scale. Bright-eyed, aspiring medical students who are left to die because they’ve already received their allotment of medicine comes off too polemical. And the bulbous, callous administrator is the story’s mustache-twirling villain, devoid of any shading to give him dimension beyond being a flat antagonist.

It’s frustrating when you agree with the core of critique -- the flaws “Critical Care” is getting at here are real -- but lowkey loathe the way a show tries to go about illustrating it. Seeing such a caricatured rendition of healthcare system doesn’t light a fire for change; it elicits eyerolls by giving its broken healthcare system all the subtlety of a G.I. Joe PSA.

Oddly enough, “Critical Care” works better less as an indictment of the medical industry, and better as a character story for The Doctor. The plot has the same flavor of “The Most Toys” from The Next Generation. In both episodes, one of our favorite artificial lifeforms is kidnapped and forced to struggle between their ethical programming and an antagonist whose amoral attitude provokes them to push the limits of their own morality in the name of a greater good.

I like that! For one thing, it’s neat to see The Doctor scheme here. The way he subtly and genially tries to convinces his captors and fellow healers to contact Voyager shows a certain slickness from him. His ploy to nab the treatment du jour from the privileged hospital wing and use it in the disregarded wing is both clever and noble. And the way he convinces the head of medicine to bless his scheme by noting that ordering less resources now will result in being granted fewer later both demonstrates the EMH’s sharpness in such matters, and the perverse incentives this system creates.

For another, seeing him test the limits of his ethical programming here gives as a deeper insight into his growth and evolution. At a basic level, you can understand him not wanting to cooperate with the people who bought him as stolen goods, while also being unable to ignore the sick and infirmed. The way that creating equity in medical treatment prompts him to lie, cheat, and steal in order to give people the care they deserve also shows a recognition that true justice often means more than blind fealty to the rules of whomever happens to be in charge.

And as cheesy a power fantasy it is for the Doctor to inject the evil administrator with a terrible illness so that he has to suffer what it’s like to be one of the “peons” he so heartlessly dismisses, it speaks to Doc’s growth as a character that he recognizes there’s a greater “needs of the many” type of ethic at play here beyond the “first, do no harm” principle that has been his lodestone to this point. You can read it as him being corrupted in a way by a corrupt system, or as him rising above it through whatever means are necessary in the name of the greater good. Either way, it reflects an interesting new personal evolution from a character whose medical ethics have been near-rock solid to this point.

Still, the best part of “Critical Care” may be the comparatively light B-story. For all the serious blather in this episode, the most entertaining part of this one is Janeway chasing the trail of the con artist who stole the EMH, with each turn being more droll and trying for her than the last. It’s kind of whimsical, small stakes problem that brought the laughs the last time Janeway chased down a grifter in “Live Fast and Prosper”, and it brings them now.

(Plus hey! There’s Jim O’Heir! And he’s basically playing a proto version of Jerry from Parks and Recreation!)

Despite the low stakes and lighter energy of the piece, it’s a surprisingly good outing for good ol’ Neelix. Him feeling bad about cooking food that sent the con artist to sick bay, potentially giving him the idea to steal the EMH, is sympathetic. Him intruding on an interrogation to feed the now-prisoner lunch in a chipper manner fits what you’d expect from the eternally amiable Talaxian. And him basically poisoning the guy (with gas pains, admittedly) to convince him to tell them where the Doctor is located is another quietly badass moment from Neelix. It’s a small arc, but an effective one. Don’t mess with Neelix’s friends, folks!

Don’t mess with the Doctor’s either, I suppose. One of the big problems with “Critical Care” is that every major player in the episode is one-dimensional. The administrator is an uncomplicated villain. The head of medicine has a change of heart on a dime. The dying patient with big aspirations is a walking cliche. And the overworked doctor who tries to do his best within the system and eventually decides to bend the rules isn’t much better. All of these characters feel like cheap props and easy stand-ins for points the writers want to make rather than living, breathing people within a lived-in world that conveys that message organically.

It’s a shame, because there’s interesting things to explore in this premise. The idea that the administrator isn’t necessarily cruel, but rather someone who has to make tough decisions based on limited resources and a society in need is hinted at before it’s washed away in mustache-twirling harshness. The unjust allocation of those resources, and how good, otherwise rule-abiding people feel compelled to violate regulations and norms in the name of healing people is worth examining. And the Doctor’s own attempts to work within the system, before deciding there’s no other way but to take matters into his own hands is a worthwhile place to take the character.

Sadly, too much here scans as a veritable haunted house for the medical industry than a more grounded look at its flaws and needed reforms. There are plenty of real life horror stories in healthcare these days, to where making a medical scenario that seems too outlandish to feel real is almost impressive.

But in trying so hard to criticize the practice of medicine of its time in such an overblown tone and terms, “Critical Care” comes of like it’s tilting at windmills, or at least straw men, rather than taking aim at the realer and more grounded problems reformers have been trying to address then and now. And if your story ends up being a flimsy vehicle for your message rather than a worthwhile tale in and of itself, you’re better off just telling people what you think outright rather than trying to dress the moral up in such transparent scrubs.

[7.4/10] Oddly enough, this episode feels less like a spiritual cousin of The Simpsons and more like a precursor to Arrested Development. The sense in which everybody here is making jerky/self-centered choices, until their storylines all intersect and their plans fall to ruin, is familiar to anyone who enjoyed Michael Hurwitz’s seminal show years after Mission Hill sadly departed the airwaves.

Andy pretending to be a good and upstanding brother to impress Kevin’s teacher is a bit of an old sitcom plot, but the show has fun with it. This one largely works on the basis of the side characters. I kind of love how depraved Kevin’s one balding, checked out teacher is. And Toby’s mom is a hoot on the other end of the spectrum, with her enthusiasm over the PTA and the “Jolly Boys”.

Kevin’s in rare form too, as a proto Jeff Winger from Community trying to convince a possible paramour that he’s not terrible in as half-assed a way as possible. Seeing all his shallow attempts to play the noble brother come crashing down, replete with him seemingly trying to buy Kevin the services of a sex worker and getting kids drunk, is some nice comical karma.

The B-story, with Kevin getting obsessed with an Everquest-style game only to create a blood feud with his friend Toby has a lot of laughs in it. Having lived through that era, I particularly enjoy George’s misadventures trying to get his late 1990s computer to run the game properly. And Kevin and Toby’s mutual vendetta over cutthroat in-game decisions has some good humor from the distance between how little is at stake and how seriously they both take it. Their street race to their computers is a little over the top, but enjoyable.

The C-story, with crunchy hippie Posey turning out to be a cutthroat capitalist in her dealings with Howard is worth a few yuks. The gross-out humor with Gus and Howard’s respective vegetable offerings doesn't do much for me. But as uncomfortable as the stereotype of Howard is, the humor of the locals getting upset at this humble shop owner for clearing out Posey’s wares and calling him “the man” wrings humor out of the situation nicely. And the fact that he spends the exorbitant funds on Posey’s veggies, only for Toby to crash into the display, is some nice clockwork storytelling.

There’s not the same firm note of sweetness at the end of this one there was in the pilot. Andy carrying Kevin despite having no one to impress, and Kevin telling his brother that he appreciates it is a nice enough grace note, but feels like a bit of a meager balm after a lot of terribleness from Andy in this one.

Still, there’s plenty of good laughs here, some nice comic escalation, and a superb crescendo where all three stories come together. A nice outing for the show.