Regeneration

**** (4 stars out of 5)
Well, everybody's heard about the Berg. The Berg, Berg, Berg, well, the Berg is the Werg. Don't you know about the Berg? Everybody's talking about the Berg!

Taking a page from 'The Thing From Another World', be-overalled human archeologists dig up some frozen mechanical men in the Arctic. They've been chilling there since 2063 or, if you prefer, the movie First Contact. They turn out to be less dead than anyone who hasn't seen a horror film might think. Bullets happen too late to stop the snowball of bad that snatches up anything it finds.

Malcolm Reed offers an opinion I heartily share: "I don't have a problem with [technology]... so long as it stays outside of my skin."

Phlox has met Bynars in the Beta Magellan system, and seen the birth ritual where the babies receive their parietal lobe synaptic processor. He sees nothing INNATELY evil in implanted technology. He doesn't even feel the need to isolate the Borgified. That approach, sadly, was too optimistic. Phlox gets it in the neck.

Archer reviews Cochrane's tall tales. Zefram tried to warn a Princeton graduating class about the possible dangers of cybernetic technology, namely the enslavement of the hive mind. Everyone assumed he was drunk, and he took it all back years later, but it's come back to bite them. Unless Phlox can keep his wits and Reed can deploy his boom-sticks.

"Regeneration" restores much of the creep factor to the Borg without ever naming them. It's a splendid final outing and first outing and it means I keep Enterprise in my collection even when we fight. Keep your eyephones outside your eyes.

Scorpion, Part II

** (2 stars out of 5)
Celebrate Boxing Day with a Box of Borg!

You'll recall how last season Janeway miraculously created the first Human-Borg Alliance on the flimsy premise that she wouldn't co-operate if assimilated. Ignoring the fact (as the Borg somehow do) that assimilation by its very nature FORCES CO-OPERATION.

If only someone among the billions and billions of Borg victims had ever thought of VERBALLY REFUSING before!

Eaten alive by the CG Creatures from the Fluidic Space Lagoon sounds pretty bad, but on screen it meant Harry Kim infected by a quiet wasting disease covered in snot-like tentacles. No wonder Voyager's Doctor finds a convenient cure so quickly. During the opening credits, in fact. The instant cure for the formerly incurable disease turns out to be: Borg nanoprobes! No WONDER the Borg couldn't fight this infection! If only the BORG had some Borg nanoprobes... oh. Wait, WHY couldn't the Borg cure this again?

A series of unlikely events during the short-lived alliance lands Voyager in a Mucus Dimension zapping Bio-Ships, Janeway out of commission, and Chakotay taking the only sensible option left by blasting their repeatedly treacherous Borg "Allies" out an airlock. Thankfully, Borg Drone mouthpiece Seven of Nine has powerful, powerful lungs that enable her to be the single survivor. (I'm insinuating that her boobs would not fit through the hatch. In case that wasn't obvious.)

Turns out the Borg picked the fight with Species 8472 (Really? This was all the Borg's fault? Were you as gob-smacked with lack of surprise as I was?). If Chakotay had not once again risked his neck to disconnect Seven of Nine from the Collective, Voyager would've been 148 drones and a smear of blue-grey hull plates on the bottom of a cube.

I have writers and more probably producers to blame for "Scorpion, Part II" instead of the actors as I used to. Weakening the Borg critically with dithering illogic while introducing a "more powerful and terrifying" enemy who never really caught on turns out to have been an idea that makes Disney's John Carter seem like a solid, successful plan.

Meanwhile, the series is saved by pandering to our gonads with the introduction of Seven of Nine. But I'll have plenty of time to complain about that later.