Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Basics, Part I

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Seska sends an SOS claiming that Cullah's steaming mad. Her baby didn't come out looking like an orange tree-headed jerk. Seska begs Chakotay to save her. And the baby. Mostly her.

The First Officer knows it's probably a trap, but he follows the guidance of his father in a vision. Some of their ancestors were raped by white conquerors, but the babies were not to blame. Chakotay chooses to accept responsibility for the child forced upon him, and Voyager's Captain and crew loyally throw themselves into the trap, too.

Neelix recuits some Talaxian allies from the colony of Prema II, Torres and Kim cook up a novel method of projecting holographic decoy ships, and Janeway rescues Seska's poor, discarded handmaiden-man, Tierna.

Each of these choices goes slightly wrong as Talaxians are no match for Kazons, one of the holoships turns out to be the Holo-Doctor wailing that he has fallen overboard, and Tierna is a plant. Not literally, even though he looks like a tree. I mean he was planted aboard in order to explode near a power conduit and disable Voyager. Celebrating the close of Suicide Season with a bang!

Before you can say "Wha hoppen?" the dumbest jocks in the Delta have stolen the ship of the nerds and stuffed them in the locker of chagrin. It's a good thing nobody in Starfleet is around to see them get thoroughly spanked.

Unceremoniously marooned on the primitive world of Hanon IV, who can come to their aid? The spear-wielding locals? The dinosaur, DINOSAUR, ancient enemy of man? The liquid hot magma?

And who will they be forced to eat in the meantime? No, the answer isn't as easy as Neelix. The man probably tastes like a giant leola root.

"Basics, Part I" did make a stunning cliffhanger. Watching the ship zoom off without them, it looked pretty bad. There's the Skipper (Janeway), there's Mary Ann (Tuvok), but I don't see Gilligan (Paris is missing). Will the Professor be able to build them a warp engine out of coconuts? And if Paris got away... who else are the Kazon overlooking?

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