LeftHandedGuitarist

Incredibly simplistic. I think if not for the excellent acting by Jennifer Lien this could be the worst episode so far.

The sexually-attracted-aliens-in-space are just embarrassing, and most of all it feel like it gets in the way of the more interesting story with Kes. There's never a second where you feel the ship is genuinely in danger, and the effects have aged very poorly.

Kes going through her version of puberty works better, but Neelix ruins it. It's ironic that she's not even 2 years old, but Neelix is the one who acts like a child. From the start of the episode he's unbearable and its something of a relief when the Doctor throws him out of sickbay. He's incapable of making decisions and when someone implants an idea in his head, he latches onto it like a toddler.

It didn't even occur to him he might have a daughter? So he's a bit sexist, too. Props to Tuvok for the best line: "why would you treat a daughter differently from a son?". At least someone has a brain.

And then convenient crew pregnancy in an episode all about mating is convenient (from a character we've never met before).

Voyager settles firmly into it's comfortable and convenient mould here. The two crews are now perfectly integrated with no mention of any hostilities between them, functioning as a happy and respectful Starfleet crew with even B'Elanna - proud Maquis terrorist and angry half-Klingon who has issues with authority - freaking out at the idea that the captain has come down for a surprise inspection of engineering.

The plot is a Star Trek mainstay, with the ship encountering a spaceborne life-form and accidentally injuring it. I feel like this has been used before.

Despite the ship being low on power reserves and replicator use being rationed, immediately after being drained further by the alien would seem to be the perfect time for Paris to fire up the holodeck and start having some fun. Nobody seems to worry about the power usage or complete waste of energy. At least Torres calls him out on his misogynistic creations.

And then worst of all, Chakotay starts up with his spirit animal diatribe. He gives great weight to the fact that he's never shown anybody his medicine bundle before, despite admitting minutes later that he's done all this with B'Elanna previously; so, he's a liar or has memory problems. Great choice for first officer. Let's not also forget that the Native American consultant behind-the-scenes on the show was outed as a complete fake, so akoo-chee-moya-shut-up.

For the positives, I like the fact that Janeway recognises she needs to be friendlier with her crew than most starship captains would.

Geordi emerges once again as the weakest character on the show. The writers just never gave LeVar Burton anything much decent to work with, and the result was almost always a contrived script that forced his character into behaving in inappropriate ways. This one with Geordi's mother could almost be the worst of the bunch ('Aquiel' wins that spot). It is great to see him without the VISOR, though.

Geordi comes up with a plausible theory about what may have happened to his mother, and for the first time ever - for no reason at all - none of his friends or colleagues are willing to believe him. It makes no sense. Really insane situations happen on board the Enterprise every week and LaForge is often instrumental in figuring out what's going on. I don't know if Burton picked up on what a weak script this was, because he doesn't seem to put much into his performance in this one. Similarly, the actress for his mother delivers something very cold and robotic - although that can be explained away by her being an alien. It still feels off.

Far better are the moments with the other characters. Riker's story about coming to terms with his own mother's death is touching, and Data choosing to help his friend is a powerful moment. Mostly, though, this is one to skip.

Every so often we're given an episode that attempts to break out of the typical Trek boundaries. Usually these episodes can turn out to be fun diversions or impressive pieces of storytelling. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.

Nothing about this episode works. From the off it's broken as we are given the unexplained and ridiculous premise that O'Brien of all people has been sent undercover to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate. O'Brien. Seriously. The chief engineer on the Federation's first line of defence in the war. I have no idea what possible skills he could have that caused him to be selected or why he ever agreed to go. It's nonsense.

Then we have Star Trek's attempt to portray criminals. This never comes off as anything but pathetic, and episodes can usually get away with it because we're having campy sci-fi fun. But when it's supposed to be serious like this, everything about the "bad guys" comes off as nothing but incompetent non-threatening thugs who like to posture a lot. The big scary Orion Syndicate we've heard about turn out to be as intimidating as a puddle. A similar thing happened over on TNG with the 'Gambit' episodes.

To compound things further, O'Brien makes a complete mess of things by beginning to sympathise with Bilby. Who, don't forget, is a murderer. But it's okay, right? Because he's got a heart of gold and loves his family. I complete side with O'Brien's handler here, and can't see Miles as anything but a bit of an idiot in this one.

If the episode does have anything going for it, it's that Nick Tate in the role of Bilby is quite charming, even if he's completely unbelievable as a mob boss. And the cat is cute.

And here we have it, the real blemish on an otherwise great show and a contender for the worst episode in the whole Trek franchise. This is quite a disgusting episode for very clear reasons: it makes light of sexism, sexual assault and attempts to turn trans-genderism/gender identity into a joke. I honestly have no idea how anyone thought this was a good idea, other maybe than "it'll be funny!". It's a shame, because the episode starts with the very interesting issue of women getting equal rights on Ferenginar before becoming derailed. It also has the superb Wallace Shawn and Jeffrey Combs doing their usual excellent work.

• We open with Quark, a character we've come to love through his faults, openly encouraging a female employee to perform sexual acts on him under the threat of being fired. But it's okay, right? It's meant to be funny.

• Quark is forced to have gender reassignment and becomes woman. It's okay, it's meant to be funny.

• We all laugh at Quark trying to act like a woman, and the way his hormones now make him feel. It's okay, it's meant to be funny.

• A Ferengi male traps female-Quark in his quarters and chases her around in an attempt to have sex with her against her will. It's all very slapstick. It's meant to be funny!

• At the end, it turns out that Quark's female employee actually wants to perform the work-enforced sex acts on him! Women always say yes if you're persistent enough, right? SO FUNNY!

• Quark doesn't actually learn anything from his experience as a woman! Ha! Sexism wasn't ever a real thing! Oh MY!

I get that this was probably a lot of fun for the writers and actors. It's not any fun to watch, though. It took all my strength not to just turn it off half way through and pretend it never happened. It disregards any character continuity for the sake of comedy (and it's not even funny, just cheesy and actually very boring). For some reason the show keeps insisting that Tom Paris is a geeky boy scout instead of the ex-con with authority issues. I don't get it, and I hate it.

Why does Janeway continue to stay in character even after the mission is over? Why don't we find out anything about the photonic aliens? Why doesn't the crew even bother to learn about them? No, it's more important to do the holodeck fantasy - which conveniently can't be shut down because reasons. I can't believe people got paid to write this.

It's interesting to compare this to DS9's 'Take Me Out To The Holosuite', which aired fairly close to this one and which is similarly bizarre but managed to succeed.
I knew that Voyager would be a struggle for me to get through, but I don't think I expected it to get as bad as this.

I don't know what they were thinking when they made this one. It manages to be not only ridiculous and stupid, but offensive to basic scientific concepts of evolution. Apparently humans are going to evolve backwards and become primitive lizard lifeforms. I can't think of any reaction other than to stick a giant middle finger up at this piece of garbage. I almost hope that somebody's career as a writer was finished after this (cough Brannon Braga cough).

The early sections with the whole idea of attempting to break the warp 10 barrier are actually somewhat interesting, but it's the way the episode becomes completely derailed after that which ruins things. Robert Duncan McNeill gets to overact gloriously and try to get the Fly-esque makeup effects to be taken seriously.

What's even more dumb, though, is that they do actually succeed in achieving warp 10, meaning they have a viable means of getting home. Sure, it's going to turn them all into lizard freaks but the Doctor could just revert them all back to their original state, as he does at the end of this episode.

Worst episode of the entire Star Trek franchise? ... quite possibly, yes. Watch it to laugh at it, make a drinking game out of it, just don't take it the slightest bit seriously.

The most difficult episode for me so far. In large part there's no sense of forward momentum, as Dougie/Coop's story has worn itself very thin. It's exasperating that none of his family or co-workers seem to realise that something is seriously wrong with him, and just carry on. The ladders and steps doodled on the case files were intriguing, though I can't tell you what they've signified to Dougie's boss. On the good side though, we get his wife (Naomi Watts) being absolutely amazing as she tells the debt collectors where to go.

Meeting Diane at long last brought a smile to my face, even though they've made Laura Dern look absolutely awful. I think Albert got the best line of the episode with his little Gene Kelly expletive. After meeting Richard Horne last week, it felt good to see him brought down a peg or two by his mobster boss, but the hit-and-run was horrific to watch. Luckily, Harry Dean Stanton was glorious and managed to bring a tear to my eye.

Most interesting was Hawk's discovery in the bathroom as he finally put together the clue of his "Indian heritage" and followed his instincts.

So, Coop needs to wake up and DON'T DIE. If he does, that will give BOB/EvilCoop free reign to stay in our world. Staying alive is going to be a problem if he has a short hitman coming at him with a twisted ice pick.

Ah, The Americans. What a ride we've had. Simultaneously an exquisitely rich series with superb acting while also being a directionless slog for large periods. When it was good it was top-drawer TV, but it always felt like a show that was lacking in behind-the-scenes navigation. The amount of dead ends, unimportant characters and entire plots which went nowhere far outweighed the intense drama of the core story: Philip and Elizabeth, and their family.

I recognise the hyperbole in saying this, but you could almost watch nothing but the first episode of season 1 followed by this finale and not really miss out on all that much. The status quo set up in the pilot episode had very few changes along the series run, with the only truly big event being Paige discovering what her parent's were doing. I thought we were going to be in for a thrill ride after that happened, but it was quite the opposite. The fact that I was more interested in the fate of Philip's travel agency than in any of the spy work says it all.

There is a lot more to it of course, not least the emotional journey the show took us on. This series finale delivered the emotional moments needed and gave us some truly heartbreaking moments as the story of the Jennings came to an end, and they lost their children while regaining their home. The garage scene with Stan was one of the most intense things the show ever did, and the final phone call with Henry had me in floods of tears. But for me, the finale failed to deliver all that much from a narrative perspective. There is no conclusion here, almost all plot threads are left dangling (Henry? Paige? Stan? Martha? Oleg? Renee? Claudia? Oleg's family? Philip's Russian son? The mail robot??? What about the travel agency?! We'll never know.)

I find myself torn between satisfaction and disappointment. I felt that the show has been largely going in the wrong direction since season 4 (that is to say, no direction at all). Circular plots went round and round again, Philip and Elizabeth grew more and more apart as the work drained them. Characters and plots kept being introduced with no bearing on what was truly important to the show's core.

I feel very let down that the show decided to leave everything until the last episode. The amount of great story opportunities concerning Paige and Stan that could have happened over the past few seasons but never did is overwhelming. As it stands, this last season of The Americans managed to go out on a higher note than I had expected but it feels to me like a show that will not be remembered as one of the TV greats (it never helped that the UK broadcast was put on an obscure channel in the early hours of the morning), but provided characters that will stick with me for a long time.