Oasis

** (2 stars out of 5)

When a trader tells them of a haunted derelict ship they might scrounge for parts, nobody expected Trip to fall in love with a G-g-g-GHOST!

What's the word for spoiling the big reveal 18 minutes into a 44 minute program? By now I know damn well what "Optronics" means. In this case, I didn't enjoy being clued in way ahead of the main characters. It left me a lot of time to wonder what Trip is actually DOING in the hologram generation room if he doesn't realize what he's fixing.

As with the Xyrillian technology, does it seem reasonable that a guy who's never conceived of such things would be very helpful repairing them? Would you invite a complete stranger to perform brain surgery on you by cryptically hinting that you have 'a plumbing problem', pointing at your skull and handing him a wrench?

Please enjoy this episode of Voyager, with a blonde pixie working in an airponics bay surrounded by holograms. Then again, it's kind of an old Star Trek stew: The Prospero's daughter bit previously borrowed by 'The Cage', Making Your own Holo-friends from 'Shadowplay' (even Odo and Dax are still present: it's Rene Auberjenois in Spots!)

Perhaps as an apology for the weak sauce story, Trip gives his easy come, easy go love interest a protein resequencer so she can have ice cream to remember him by. Ice cream is only around 10% protein. So what do you put INTO a protein resequencer anyway? Expired ham?

Midnight at the "Oasis". Send your camel to bed! Still, anything with Colonel West in it can't be that bad. "I don't want to leave. I am happy here." says our Prospero, and he might as well be expressing my devotion to THIS fantasy series. I loved watching it with my friends back in 2002- it was a very good time for me. It's always sad when things end: the deleted scenes tell me even T'Pol is afraid of going-away parties.

Equinox, Part II

** (2 stars out of 5)

Kiss this face! KISS IT!

Janeway goes rogue for no great reason. She's obsessed with catching Captain Ransom to the point where she's using kidnap, threatening to torture and kill, barking at everyone, and shooting at everything. Ransom, meanwhile, mellows for no great reason, either. He balks at having the Doctor torture Seven of Nine, despite deleting the EMH's ethics to get the job done.

In fact, while both ships are shooting at each other and Janeway is lying (?) to the Green Goblins, promising that she will let them have their deadly revenge, it is actually Ransom and Gilmore who enforce the Equinox surrender and beam the survivors to safety on Voyager. Burke dies in the midst of a clumsy mutiny, and our EMH deletes the treacherous EVIL MH. To be clear, if our EMH counts as a person, then this counts as a murder. Self-defence, I'll grant you. 'Deactivate' is as easy to say as 'delete', isn't it? Like everything else, no one seems to hold any grudges for anything anyone has done. Slaps on the wrist all around, then, and back to business as usual. It's eerily like the first season, where Voyager just adds terrorists to the melting pot and all is forgiven and forgotten quite conveniently.


Remember 'The Omega Glory'? Probably not. It's one of the worst episodes of the Original Series. And it has a lot in common with "Equinox, Part II" except reviewers seem to love 'Equinox, Part II'. 'The Omega Glory' also has a rogue Starfleet Captain (Tracey) who throws away his principles, gets most of his crew killed, and slaughters aliens by the boatload. On the plus side, Captain Ransom is not the centerpiece in a patriotic wank-fest. On the minus side, at least Captain Tracey didn't die while wearing a VR headset for what looks like a masturbatory fantasy about Seven of Nine.

And 'The Omega Glory' is the story where Captain Kirk claimed Starfleet officers swear oaths to DIE before breaking the Prime Directive. Starving to death is a form of dying, if I'm not mistaken. So. in theory, if Janeway had been put in Ransom's position, she would have LET her people starve to death rather than kill the Eel Men. In any case, it will never matter: we'll never see these killers again. Janeway may have adopted five of them and given them a stern talking to, but as far as the series is concerned they all walked into a plasma injector six seconds after they left her office.

Bliss

 ** (2 stars out of 5)

Hey, it's a telepathic cloud-shark 2,000 km in diameter. Seven has never seen its like before! We have, of course, but we saw 'One of Our Planets is Missing'.

Everyone falls under the creature's spell and believes that only the best is happening- which is to say they got home to Earth and every terrorist is pardoned and every pie is rapidly cooling on every windowsill.  In the wise words of a member of the Mon Calamari Admiralty: "IT'S A TRAAAP!"

Only Seven is immune, because she's Seven. Also Naomi Wildman because... uh... she wants for nothing? As a half-Ktarian she doesn't have a sense of nostalgia? I really have no idea why Naomi is immune.

Whatever the case, W. Morgan Shepperd has been hunting the monster for forty years since it ate a ship-full of his family and friends. He's not in the mood for cuddling.

Tricksy and vastly intelligent though the beast must surely be, like the devouring amoeba from 'The Immunity Syndrome', it responds poorly to antimatter and spits them back up.  Even though, by crusty old Ahab's tale, it eats ships all the time, antimatter and all. Sooo... I guess... lucky shot?!

"Bliss" does not live up to its name, Mr. Shepperd's fine performance notwithstanding. Great effects on the beast's innards, but a story that seems very, very same-y.

 I'll tell you what Bliss REALLY is. Four years married to a most wonderful woman today! If she turns out to be a Siren on the Rocks or some devouring telepathic pitcher plant... well, eat away, baby, 'cause I couldn't be happier.

Living Witness

***** (5 stars out of 5)
<-- Museum Curator Quarren...

Discovers the Holographic Doctor-->

...under the ocean with other missing detritus from the warship Voyager. Missing, lo, these 700 years since those vicious Starfleet bastards committed their grievous war crimes against the Vaskans and Kyrians. And then ran back home to Mars like the cowards they were.

But the moment Voyager's heretofore unknown back-up physician claps his simulated eyes on the museum exhibits devoted to Voyager's historical shenanigans (such as phaser executions and orbital genocide), he has a bone to pick with the archaeologists. Well, not literally. He's still a medical hologram, not a dancing skeleton.

The Doctor's first-hand experience is in direct conflict with Quarren's meticulous research. Seven of Nine didn't usually assimilate anyone who looked at Janeway funny! Chakotay rarely tortured prisoners. And BLACK turtlenecks? Kyrian, please.

The official history has become an ancient grudge-match game of "telephone" that has distorted the truth for many centuries. And the racial inequality between the Vaskans and the Kyrians has only gotten worse by 3074. Can the Doctor and Quarren make a difference?

"Living Witness" is a story that asks everyone to consider the source... and also kind of bravely recommends allowing history itself to go unavenged... if it makes living in the present better for everyone.

And, no... I never make mistakes.