Twisted

* (1 implosion ring out of 5)

Kes's second birthday party is crashed by some crap called a distortion wave. It then becomes a distortion ring. The distortion ring surrounds them WITH A RING "forcing" them to pass through. (Now, since Voyager can move in 360 degrees wouldn't it take a GLOBE to enclose them? Arrgh! This is weapons-grade nonsense, surely designed to infuriate the audience. And it never lets up.)

The ship becomes a maze, our crew meandering around in aimless loops. 'One Riker! One Bridge!' howls Worf... I mean, B'Elanna. Sorry, I was having 'Where Silence Has Lease' flashbacks. And that's no fun for anyone. Torres doesn't spazz out, she gets flustered when she walks in on a guy in his underpants. Now THAT'S fun for everyone!

The distortion ring becomes an implosion ring. It's well on its way to becoming an onion ring.

Cunning Plans are proposed for Tuvok to use the thrusters, or Torres to create a shock pulse. Even if she does this RIGHT Voyager will explode. LONG story short- these plans fail.

Communing with the Onion Ring somehow, Janeway spews gibberish. 'Lights of Zetar', anyone?

Chakotay's 'Roll over Submissively and Think of the Federation' Maneuver deployed on the horny flagellates from 'Elogium' is used again. Tuvok proposes sitting quietly and letting the phenomenon do whatever it wants to them. Everyone holds hands and things get freaky and/or deaky.

And that's that. Something left 20 million gigaquads of STUFF in the computer and as they never explain it or mention it again it was probably 20 trillion spam e-mails: 50% kitties, 50% porn.

Oh, and Neelix shows up at the end with cake, and no explanation of where he's been. This might be the vestigial remains of a joke, but nobody's laughing.

After enduring "Twisted", the confusion of endless identical rooms is the closest this comes to something good: the movie "Cube". Was 'Twisted' trying to be scary? Silly? Just fill time?!? I loathe it so. What I wouldn't give for a palate-cleansing Deep Space Nine feature-length epic with space battles and the return of a beloved character... oh, that's tomorrow? What luck!