The Omega Directive

* (1 Omega Molecule out of 5)
Seven of Nine doesn't know everything every Borg knew, but remembers whatever the Borg considered most important, with the irrelevancies strained out like soup.

Even with just the highlights, she is the smartest human being that ever was. Lantern-hanging Harry asks "So what do you need the rest of us for?"

The answer is cold indifference and a giant spotlight on the ongoing problem I have with her character.

Janeway clams up with a super-secret secretty secret of secret secrecy which only starship captains know (and Seven of Nine, who has eaten starship captains to gain their rich, tasty knowledge).

The Omega molecule, complex and harmonious, is worshipped by the Borg. The most I can say about that is the Borg have clearly never assimilated sanity. Who literally worships The God Particle?

Back in the 2270's Federation physicist Ketteract and his colleagues perished and the Lantaru sector was rendered impassable at warp speed. All this... from a single Omega molecule explosion. The Borg lost a lot of drones to their single experience with it 229 years ago. The ore it is made from, boronite, is very rare. But, please, do keep talking about it. Bore on, boronite. Bore on.

Some poor Delta Quadrant bastards just managed to blow up everything in 30,000 kilometers... except ground zero, which seems fine somehow? The explosion melted durable duritanium but left a guy unmelted and chatting away. At ground zero, you understand.

Janeway tasks her people to destroy all the molecules. Seven wants to harness them or pray to them or something.

To make a long, dull story short the galaxy is not destroyed, nobody goes home happy, and nothing happens of any consequence but Janeway and Seven gripe at each other about it anyway.

"The Omega Directive" is plenty of shots of people arguing and looking. It is around 45 minutes long. And I'll never get that back. Twice.

Random Thoughts

* (1 star out of 5)

Too much TV and comics make you violent, kids! I read it someplace. No, I tell a lie. It was probably on TV. Nobody READS when they've got TV. (Also TV makes me lie.)

On the peaceful planet of the Mari, a society of telepaths gets along just fine, unless somebody has an unkind thought in their head. In which case, all hell breaks loose. Beatings for everyone!

Neelix has just met a Mari girl with big melons to squeeze, and she really wants to tug onhis whiskers. Somehow, these are not euphemisms. Unfortunately, before he can make her his newest child bride she is murdered by some random nobody who passed near our resident Klingon.

Torres' excitingly violent thoughts were stolen for Home Distribution in a process sometimes known as Vile Sharing. As the originator of the thoughts, B'Elanna is the condemned criminal here and scheduled for a brain purge. Tuvok works with the uptight lady cop from "The High Ground", AKA B'Etor's identical cousin, to try to prove Torres' innocence. Or something. When the crime is 'Thinks Too Loudly' there's not much wiggle room.

Undercover Tuvok shares some of his own deeply buried nastiness and freaks out the back-alley Illicit Idea dealer. Apparently Tuvok saw the last two Star Trek movies and even Event Horizon! His thoughts contain several scary clips, as many as five! A PG rating at least! I'd half expected to see Dexter Remmick's head explode again in flashback, except it could be hard to justify Tuvok having been there to see it.

"Random Thoughts" is pretty much a re-hash of Voyager's own "Ex Post Facto", only without any of the noir style or charm. And this from a guy who likes B'Elanna to the degree that can earn restraining orders. The story slogs along without surprises or insights and ends on Seven of Nine clucking her so-superior tongue at human folly and Janeway's snappy comeback, as usual, is essentially  'Mommy's tired, so just do what mommy says! Now go back to your cargo room and watch TV.'

Threshold

* (1 star out of 5)

This is your brain. This is your brain on speeds above Warp 10. Or, if you like, this is 'Spock's Brain' on speed.

Finally, the answer to the question no one ever asked: what happens if you accelerate beyond Warp 10? Screw the Warp 5 speed limit! What if you break the speed limit of infinite velocity?

Well, stupidly, you see everything everywhere all at once. Then you become everything everywhere or something. Followed by death, some slight Time-Lord-ism, and moderate to extreme flakiness. In every sense of the word. Thomas Paris sheds his skin and tongue, or as they call it in the business, "Going Full Brundlefly".

In short order, Paris has "evolved" into a giant salamander, kidnapped the Captain to salamanderize her as well, followed by a whirlwind courtship and pregnancy. I use the word "evolved" because the episode does, though I'm unclear on how stumpy, useless limbs and atrophied sense of parental responsibility could possibly be good for species survivability.

I'm not prejudiced against mutants. Ninja Turtles? Like 'em. Monster stories? Like 'em. Not all of them, but a lot of them. This is not one of them. It's a horrible mess, and if there's something to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, it's that Star Trek doesn't make appalling episodes like this one all that often.

It's hard to say what's worst for me about "Threshold". The blasphemy? The Scientific Balderdash? Heroes abandoning their offspring from a one-night stand without a second thought or backward glance? I had to seriously consider adding a rating LOWER than one star. But I usually like Braga's writing, the make-up got an Emmy, and somebody had to build those fucking catfish puppets. Plus I can't fault the acting: they are chewing all the scenery they're supposed to. Sometimes it's nobody's fault: sometimes big, unfixable, glaring, brain-melting mistakes just happen.