Revulsion

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Dejaren the HD25 isomorphic projection has killed everyone on his ship. Why? A fine question... which is not satisfactorily answered here. In the long-ago words of Klingon Ambassador Kell: "Motive? Who cares for motive? Humans, perhaps."

The Serosian crew apparently abused their projection, possibly beyond the requirements of working with caustic materials in a single room forever without being recognized as an equal. So... the fastidious holo-janitor with no rights but with consciousness may perhaps have been justified. I'd say it was a tough call, though: what with anyone who might have given the other side of the story being bashed to death with a hammer and stuffed into every available nook and cranny.

Meanwhile, Seven of Nine eliminates Harry Kim's attraction to her by coming on 79 times as strong. I had some trouble with this, because my hero Harry comes away from the encounter looking pretty bad. Too horny to remain loyal to his girlfriend back home, but too cowardly to follow through on his clumsy attempt to cheat with the New Girl. It's very human, but it's very embarrassing. It strains my understanding of his character, too.

The Isomorph graduate from the Lore Soong School of Irrational Rage tries to tear B'Elanna's eight-chambered heart out. Well, she's ORGANIC! Isn't that the same as asking for it??? Anyway, she kills him back in self-defence.

"Revulsion" lurches sickeningly between farce and half-baked thriller (only the audience can decide which is which.) But I have quite a bit of affection and/or respect for guest murderer Leland "What's Inside Me?" Orser. O.K., there's not much being said here. Don't give something intelligence if you're creating it to be abused. Or, preferably, don't abuse things. If you're not sure if something is a thing or a person, err on the side of not abusing it.

A Time to Stand

 **** (4 stars out of 5)
Wow. Spend an eye-blink with Voyager and we're suddenly three months into the Dominion War. Sisko and his Starfleet gang (plus Mr. Garak for colour) are living on Starbase 375. Where the uniforms are brighter but the prospects are pretty dim.

Weyoun and the Dominion are actually on their best behaviour with their new bitch planet Bajor. Nobody's enslaved, nobody's going hungry. Of course, they're not exactly equals or anything. Bajorans with extra gumption are moving back to Terok Nor, but none of them are allowed to have guns. It's like Canada with lizard men!

98 out of 112 ships from Starfleet's Seventh Fleet are destroyed by Jem'Hadar. THIS AFTERNOON. This is bad news, but apparently typical of the way things are now. Luckily, our characters are all alive in the AfterMASH, while Dax and Worf are making wedding plans. Mostly Worf.

Sisko's crew is on a secret mission aboard their captured Jem'Hadar ship to destroy the biggest ketracel-white factory in Cardassian space. Along the way, they are forced to exchange fire with U.S.S. Centaur under Captain Charlie Brown, uh, Reynolds. Again, luck is on their side in disabling their out-of-the-loop allies without adding a 99th Starfleet ship to the Dominion tally.

Dukat's initials are S.G. And based on his behaviour toward Kira, if the 'G' stands for Guy, the 'S' probably stands for Sexual Harassment.

Stifled and presumably just standing around keeping Kira alive for the past 3 months, Odo finally makes a request and gets his Bajoran security force reinstated. In return, Weyoun requests his idol Odo sit on the station's Ruling Council with him and Dukat. And also would it kill him to pat Weyoun on the head every once in a while? Wiping out all freedom in the galaxy is so stressful!

Sisko's Sneakies lose their warp drive destroying the white supply. Think Voyager has it bad? Well, what about a 17 year journey with no chairs and rations for only 3 weeks? Join us next time when we'll see if Mr. Garak is as delicious as he looks...

"A Time to Stand" and the rest of this six-episode epic wartime experimental story arc was a full head and shoulders above its sister series. Like the Next Generation, I felt like Deep Space Nine got a little better at saying what it wanted to say every year. I may hate war, but I loves me some space drama!

Nemesis

* (1 star out of 5)
Holy hell, this is like NINE shuttle crashes now! I'm starting to think Chakotay has never LANDED a shuttle before!
In Disney's least popular park- Vietnamland, the Vori abhor none but the Nemesis: the Kradin. The Krady beast. Kradinator. Krading Copies.

Vori Sturdy Defender Brone drills Chakotay in the tactics of "The Clash". How to call London back and so forth.

It seems Chakotay's universal translator must've taken a knock, too. It's set to Seldom Used Synonym. The Vori never say simply, cousin, what can be said stiffly and unnaturally: Trees are 'trunks', clothes are 'coverings', seen is 'glimpsed', the future is 'the soon after'. You may come to regard it as cleverly unfamiliar or deeply annoying. Perhaps both.

Kitten Rafin Smith from Starship Troopers is gunned down while wrestling his trembles to rages. Man, oh, man, Gloried Defenders, I wish I was watching Starship Troopers for the 14th time instead of this episode for the third.

But while trying to recover her missing first officer, Janeway has befriended Ambassador Treen of the Krady beasts. Oh noes!

The atrocities Chakotay sees the Kradin perform have all been Imaginary Stories during a drugged indoctrination procedure. The Kradin probably have all manner of REAL atrocities, but for those you'd have to watch them in their other roles: Predator, Predator 2, Alien vs. Predator, etc. I'm saying with maws like those they've probably yanked out a spine or two in their time.

The verdict? As the Vori say: "It's not so savoury."

I propose that the title "Nemesis" should never again be used in Star Trek. Ever. It's clearly cursed. HEED MY WARNING! You'd be sharp to do my tellings. Fathom? Avoid the Nemesis! (I wish it were as easy to stop talking like a Vori as it is to start.)

Day of Honor

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

It's a Very Klingon Yom Kippur and B'Elanna Torres is having one of those days.

Broken acoustic inverter in her sonic shower makes her hair stand on end. Chakotay orders her to take baby bird Seven into her engineering nest. And to top it all off, some hobos steal her warp core.

Didn't Voyager meet some Caatati off-screen in season two? Rhetorical question. They did. I looked it up.  Caatati must be a very common race name. Well, not THAT common any more, what with how THESE ones were mostly destroyed by the Borg.

Torres wants Seven to feel remorse or guilt from the death and horror inflicted across the galaxy by the Borg. Well, tough. She doesn't. What do you want?  Raised by a cult of mechanistic monsters, remember?

Nonsensically, the Caatati visitor happens across Tom and Seven in a random hallway. Based on a cursory glance at an unfamiliar human with one metal eyebrow he leaps to the absurd conclusion that the woman is a different species. Tuvok unhelpfully informs him that she's Borg. As you might imagine, the Caatati flips out. Forcing our dashing crew to shelter her. How the boys love their new Borg!

Torres doesn't want Neelix's traditional Day of Honour blood pie or to self-evaluate the last year. She found Klingon ritual hateful as a child, yet now she's not so sure. (I'm pretty sure. Klingons are made of anger. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Heh. Yoda.)

With a deeply optimistic sense of trust in a dangerous sociopath who betrayed them mere days earlier, the crew try to use 7 of 9's atrocity-fueled knowledge to make a transwarp drive. This fails instantly and spectacularly. When Tom and Torres fall overboard trying to fish back the ejected warp core, B'Elanna finally confesses her love for the ship's resident bad boy as their oxygen dwindles away.

"Day of Honor" is a tie-in to a handful of novels loosely linked by taking place on this Klingon holiday. The episode forces me to like the Torres story and roll my eyes at the Seven story. Is this how it's going to be for another 4 years? Every B story will be about Seven of Nine now?

The Gift

*** (3 stars out of 5)
7 of 9 has been separated from the Borg collective and the drone's human immune system has begun to reassert itself. The EMH sets about removing the implants as quickly as possible. Except the good ones. The oven mitt hand and corset, for example.  And are the high heels extensions of her actual heels? Because that's very useful.

Fortunately for the quick de-Borging surgeries, Nurse Kes has psychokinesis. And is leaving for her new series Suddenly Psychokinesis. Unfortunately, Old News Elf will have to wait half an hour for Exciting New Boobs to shove her story out of the way forever.

Janeway finds Annika Hansen in the archives: her iconoclastic explorer parents lit out for the Delta Quadrant and distinguished themselves by becoming the first human nuclear family absorbed by the Borg. Hooray?

7 of 9 is still in bits when Janeway decides to become her new Queen, force her to develop individuality, free will, play nice with others and if she has time after recovering from 18 years of inhuman trauma would she mind removing the Borg bits mucking up Voyager.

Kes gains mastery over the subatomic, and under that a new level of reality. And under that, some stray coins and lint from God's pants' pockets.

Harry Kim clumsily hits on 7 of 9. "I guess the Borg meet a lot of people, don't they?" She backhands him and calls in her Borg cavalry. It's Harry's most successful relationship to date.

Kes is talking exactly like The Traveller, seeing thought, time and space as one. Is it the Talaxian moon-ripened champagne talking or is Kes's rebirth into another realm wrecking up the joint?

It's not easy becoming a space genie or whatever.

When Kes vanishes, her parting gift throws Voyager safely beyond Borg space (in theory) and ten years closer to home. Better than a copy of Ocampa Glow Stick: The Home Game.

Leaving one Borg chamber for Seven to live in, they throw the rest out, I guess. Seven hates being human and Janeway for making her into one. But nobody hates the EMH for designing her catsuit and styling her hair. (He's got fashion design down cold, but no head-shrinking database.)

"The Gift" trades Kes for Seven. Which seemed like a mistake. I know, I know, strong, intelligent, opinionated females are not the worst idea ever. And I normally praise skin-tight costumes for their own sake alone! But the tormented cyborg sexpot was simultaneously obvious and off-putting to me. No, really, I'm as surprised as anyone.

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.

Call To Arms

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Rom and Leeta's preparation for their awkward wedding continues. How do you compromise on a Bajoran marriage conducted by the spiritual munificence of the Emissary and a Ferengi marriage where the Bride only has to Be There and Be Bare? Quark can't bear it: his brother will have no bridal auction? No latinum dances? No Pin the Toupee on the Trump?
Jake's got two jobs- as an official correspondent for the Starfleet News Service and for the Federation News Service (unless they are the same thing). Also Jake is going to be hosting 'DMZ's Keeping Away From the Cardassians'.

The Romulans, Miradorn and Tholians have signed Dominion Nonaggression treaties, and all the while more Jem'Hadar warships pour through the wormhole.

Rom helps concoct a cloaked self-replicating swarm-detonating minefield to block the invaders' entry. But his mind's elsewhere: Rom is worrying about the wedding so much, he's always rushing to waste extraction.

Worry rather about Weyoun: he talks about peace, security, and feeding the starving Cardassian children, but remove the mines or lose the station is the man's bottom line. Sorry, I shouldn't follow a sentence about waste extraction with a sentence about a man's bottom.

After Bajor signs the non-aggression treaty, the station's Bajoran population (except stubborn Kira) are ordered to evacuate back to their home planet for safety. Ziyal stays with Kira's friends. It's good to hear Kira still HAS some friends. Alive ones.

But for how much longer? Dukat is eager for a little unnecessary bloodshed.

Nobody gets everything they want as half the good guys practice the 'Running Away' part of valour, and the other half welcome their new alien overlords.

"Call To Arms" is a collection of heart-felt farewells, plus Rom unintentionally delivering a monologue similar to one from Casablanca. Although there's more of Booger than of Bogart about him. The problems of two sentients don't amount to a hill of Breens in this crazy cosmos!