Hatchery

** (2 stars out of 5)

Having delivered 50% of T'Pol's behind, and a copious amount of Phlox Phlesh, I will spare you the sight of the slimy, grape-like globules dangling above Captain Archer's head in this shot. You may find it distasteful, sir, I could just file a report on that.

Investigation of a crashed Xindi Insectoid ship uncovers only Corpses and Eggs, and not the good kind. (It's no Denny's.) I hope Trip was using gallows humour when he suggested they might find a new insect for Reed's dad. It's a far cry from collecting butterflies on pins to having a dead sentient bug child in a shoebox.

The Insectoids live for 12 years, reproducing asexually and copiously. The reason they had kids along on a military vessel appears to be that they have kids along A LOT. -Morbo, how's the family? Belligerent and Numerous! -Good, 'cause Nixon's pro-war and pro-family.

Nobody seems to care as much as Archer about the death of Jiminy Cricket. Saving the hatchery becomes his top priority, siphoning Enteprise's own gas tank to preserve the drippy, drippy eggs he keeps standing under with his mouth open. Lieutenant Ellen Ripley might have had something to say about that.

Wacky Jon unfairly relieves T'Pol and Reed of duty, and orders Hoshi to start shouting for help in Giant Grasshopper, putting (say it with me) The Entire Earth at Risk! Mutiny time!. And luck or sheer incredulity causes the Starfleeters to best the MACO stormtroopers. Hard as that might be to believe.

"Hatchery" loses me when it turns out Captain Archer needs to be Drugged on Drippings to have compassion for enemy infants. Archer's great-grandfather served in North Africa during the Eugenics Wars (haven't heard about that in a while! Man, that takes me back to the 1990's!) in which Archer's ancestor called the enemy for a cease fire to evacuate schoolchildren. How the mighty have fallen: without trick pheromones it seems this generation would have left the baby bugs in a ditch. Heroism!

Nothing Human

*** (3 stars out of 5)

When a pinkish leech creature latches onto Torres' chest and tries to drink her dry, it must have seemed familiar to some mothers, but baffles the Doctor.

The EMH has been driving the crew mad with his obsessive and tedious slide-shows now that he's a holo-photography shutterbug. But this hideous refugee from Stephen King's 'The Mist' has Tom mad with worry instead, and the only solution turns out to be a terrible idea.

Because his electronic brain crammed with hundreds of physicians' recorded experiences and a comprehensive Federation medical database are somehow not good enough to figure out how to get an unconvincing rubber mosquito loose, the EMH calls in a consultant. And with no sense of tact whatsoever, it's the Josef Mengele of Cardassia, Dr. Crell Moset. (Wasn't there a Dr. Greg House program in the database? And, if not, why isn't all this knowledge ALREADY part of the Doctor?)

Poor Ensign Tabor gets "tut tut" and "pooh pooh" from the unusually arch and unsympathetic EMH when the Bajoran declares Moset is the asshole who flayed his grandpa alive with nadion radiation. Even Torres would rather not have her life saved by a holographic version of a man who cured thousands from the fostossa virus by infecting hundreds WITH the virus.

Still, Moset is effective, so everyone uses his science anyway and just wrings their hands and feels bad about it afterwards. As you do. If you're alive to moralize, it must have all worked out.

"Nothing Human" is VERY human, and the final credited on-screen contribution from the woman who made Voyager possible, Jeri Taylor. Who is great. O.K., so I don't especially love this story, and Roxanne Dawson is little more than a glorified prop who deserved... I don't know... LINES. Still, it raises good questions about morality or something. Your experience may vary.

Macrocosm

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Only Janeway could make a mortal enemy just by putting her hands on her hips. Neelix has to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Tak Tak, a people who use a complex gestural language and are easily offended. Hand-talkers beware.

Meanwhile, the crew of Voyager has devolved into monkeys and the ship is drifting while they chase each other... no, wait, that was 'Genesis'. The crew has all come down with a virus, and the ship is drifting while they lie in piles of fevered unconsciousness. This is no ordinary virus, oh no. It's A MACROVIRUS. That means it's big.

Vomiting in the very face of the laws of physics, these bugs incubate in the bloodstream but grow billions and billions of times bigger, entering the visible world as buzzing mites from sores on their victims, then continuing to expand and then somehow fly and sting and slime their way around.

When they carry Neelix off to their larder, it's up to Janeway to Ripley her way to victory. Sweating, tank-topping, shooting, stabbing, and plasma-flame grenade-ing her way to victory. Sending wave after wave of hologram beach bunnies to their holo-deaths, although thankfully not the one hologram we really like.

"Macrocosm" is less enthralling than I once found it to be, but I can't dislike it at all. Action-thrills is a different kind of fun, and that's worthy enough. Plus I'm keen on the CG creatures. Logically, they make no sense at all, but they are definitely creepy.