Vis a Vis

*** (3 stars out of 5)

The EMH finds it as difficult as pulling teeth to get Tom Paris to focus on sickbay work when there's a holodeck Camaro in need of surgery. (Seriously, what's wrong with Voyager? NONE of those people I'm always seeing in the halls with the blue shoulder pads have more medical experience than TOM PARIS? I guess nobody is willing to declare their minor in medicine while getting their subspace physics degree: because it would mean spending more time with the EMH.)

Tom saves a guy in a space hot rod with a coaxial space-fold drive which goes into a skid. In space. Turns out it's Bulldog from Station KACL. Oh, I finally got that: it's Cackle. Nice one, 'Frasier'.

Anyway, Steth from Benthos is a thrill-a-minute test pilot dodging the Entaban po-po. For no Earthly reason I can imagine, Tom wants to run off with this dude instead of playing with B'Elanna's plasma manifolds.

OF COURSE, Steth is not all he seems. He's one of those anime characters with fluctuating gender, but hardly as benign as Ranma Saotome or Birdy Cephon. Reading up on Tom, he swaps lives with the dissatisfied helmsman, launching the unconscious grease monkey off in his discarded Benthan body.

While Steth with Tom's face gets down to some kissage with Torres, Steth-Tom meets up with a pissed-off Benthan cop who's been similarly body-jacked.

Bored, irresponsible and drunk, the identity thief threatens Torres and Seven before strangling the Captain. Tom and the cop chase "Janeway" down and, at last, the Doctor forces everyone to play nice and go back to their original sets of genitals.

"Vis a Vis", like many 'Voyager' episodes, was better when it was the 'Red Dwarf' episode, in this case, "Body Swap". Still, I have to hand it to Dan Butler and Robert Duncan McNeill, who play each other's characters quite well.

Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night

*** (3 stars out of 5)

In the wise words of my good friend and colleague Ron Gleason: "There's no worse career than Assistant Crack Whore." Major Kira discovers the truth of this while time travelling into her mother's past.

 A midnight video call from that bastion of honesty and mental health S.G. Dukat reveals an unappetizing "truth". Kira Meru was his lover... for years.

Umm... would you take the word of Hitler, tooling around a war zone in a VW bug? (And you'd think Starfleet could track its own stolen shuttles, but Dukat seems to continue to elude everyone. Insanity must work like a cloaking device.)

Kira again uses the Orb of Time, but now the only funny tribbles are in Dukat's pants.

Evading soup muggers, "Luma Rahl" briefly meets her infant self, and is quickly 'procured' as a "comfort woman" alongside her mom. "Linger as long as you want in the sonic showers." says Basso, formerly from the movie UHF. "Cardassians value cleanliness." Oh, Basso, you sleaze. Why didn't you stay in television with your pal Weird Al? U62 was a broken-down station, too, but at least there the goings-on weren't so unsavoury.

Prefect Dukat is full of honeyed words about bridging the gulf between their peoples. Of course, he'd be easier to like if he wasn't running a rape dungeon orbiting a slave world.

Despite literally walking a mile in her mother's high-heeled shoes, Kira can only take the hard line that she should have died before "collaborating". Or can she? One thing's for sure: nobody's forgiving Dukat anytime soon.

"Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night" in the words of Dax: "It'll be the grimmest party you've ever been to..."

The Killing Game, Part II

*** (3 stars out of 5)

It's Hirogen vs the Frankenstien's monster crew of historical re-enactment soldiers they created last episode. This will happen if you plaster up hundreds of holo-emitters in the halls. At least they don't have era-appropriate trench mouth.

The Hirogen doctor finally has enough of the EMH's bleeding heart and shuts him down. Human wounded will now be placed carefully in the trash.

Tom as "Lt. Davis" nearly shoots a suspiciously Asian Harry Kim without the right answer. The right answer is: Betty Grable has great gams. Thankfully, Harry knew this. I'm not sure I would have survived in his place. I don't know Betty Grable from Betty Boop. (I'm no good with sports questions, either, but with a blog like this one you've probably guessed that.)

In her right mind, Janeway forms an alliance with Chakotay's "Captain Miller" and Neelix's Drunk Klingon "K'Leenix". Holographic explosives work just fine on real corridors.

Young Hirogen Taranj is inspired by the strength and purity of a Holo-Nazi's speechifying. He guns down his Alpha superior and returns to the Most Dangerous Game with Janeway herself. She fakes him out with pretend cowardice and real fisticuffs. (Plus a gun. Kathy's no dope.)

After "heavy casualties" which seem to have happened offscreen again, the Hirogen leave with a trophy: Janeway gives their new Alpha some holodeck tech so he can whip holo-characters like uppity rent boys to his cold lizard heart's content. Morally questionable to sell a hypothetical holo-race into slavery? Who cares! We'll never see THEM again!

"The Killing Game, Part II" is a fannish run-around. But I'm a fan, so what the hell. My biggest question is: why not leave the holoemitters up? Handy as the Doctor is, wouldn't this be like giving him wheelchair ramps? Helpful, right? Plus... (and granted this might get confusing) why not program a complete copy of your crew to do all your work? Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Killing Game

*** (3 stars out of 5)

What the what? Janeway's a Klingon? And stabbed? What can the Hirogen be playing at?

They really are playing. They captured the Voyager, and true to form, they cut the geeks up for fish bait. Everyone's dead and the series is over.

No? No. Instead, their too-clever leader must have seen the movie 'Dark City' and decided to do that instead. He's rigged the crew up with neural interfaces so they all believe themselves to be holodeck characters. Their Nerd Slave Harry Kim has been tasked to expand the holodecks. He's wallpapered the whole ship in holo-emitters from the spring collection, as you do. Now they'll be killing: not for real-real, but for play-play.

They've been at this for weeks. At least one crewer has died, despite the Doctor's non-stop efforts to keep everyone alive in this Hirogen blender.

Why, you ask? "Species that don't change... die," the commander insists. He wants to re-build Hirogen civilization before they spread themselves too thin and die out. Play Nintendo Duck Hunt instead of Hunt Actual Ducks. His men would rather shout the Hirogen equivalent of 'yee-haw' and splatter all the guts, but what are you gonna do.

So they hang out with brain-hijacked Janeway as Rick from 'Casablanca' in a French Night Club in September 1944, taking pot-shots at Neelix while he peddles around on his baguette bicyclette. It is both absurd and horrible. Absorrible!

The Doctor and Harry manage to re-set Mademoiselle Sept de Neuf back to Seven of Nine. Apparently she never assimilated a chanteuse, because she immediately forgets how to sing. Can she succeed against a box of action figures like 'Tommy-Gun Tuvok' and 'G.I. Maquis Joe'? The fire-fight in Sainte Claire blows a hole through the holodeck walls and angry brainwashed crew spill into the real ship.

"The Killing Game" is visually interesting, and does actually have a better SF premise than the previous Nazi alien outing "Patterns of Force". But it's also got more explosions than brains. So turn off the brains and enjoy the pretty explosions.

Change of Heart

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Dax and Worf are assigned to extract a Cardassian double agent called Lasaran.

Worf's idea of a honeymoon is a slog across Vulcan's Forge, or shivering their way across the mountains of Andor. Dax wants to have room service on the self-indulgent planet Casperia Prime, the "vacation capital of the Hoverian Cluster". Worf agrees easily. Dax is surprised he's so agreeable.

She's even more surprised by how dull the Enterprise must have been if they thought WORF was the funny one. (Ha, ha, DS9. Dull is not a stone you want to throw today, what with your glass house.)

Lasaran is defecting with information about the Founders, and he needs to be lifted out of the jungles of Soukara. Which are full of transporter scramblers. Time for some old-fashioned walking! (And he'll probably want to be literally lifted on the way back, he seems like a load.)

Meanwhile, O'Brien is a man who loves a challenge. Kayaking down the same holo-river for seven years. Playing darts against a guy with enhanced co-ordination. And today: beating QUARK at tongo. Well, forcing the enhanced guy to beat Quark at tongo. The Ferengi distracts Bashir with the sob story that Dax was probably their only chance at happiness and they let WORF win her heart. This technique works: turns out the doctor still fancies her.

Not as much as Worf, of course. Fancies Dax, I mean. Not Bashir and Worf. Save it for the slash fiction, ladies.

As a boy, Worf wanted to run naked with the wolves of the Ural Mountains when his father took him camping. But when his wife is shot by a Jem'Hadar anti-coagulant beam, the sexy talk stops and the real misery sets in. Will Worf save a selfish Cardassian jerk and thus potentially end the war, or will he save his wife? There is no contest. Worf didn't really want an upwardly mobile career anyway, did he? Or (let's not kid ourselves) an END TO THE WAR. He's a KLINGON, if you'll recall.

"Change of Heart"offers some stunning effects as Dax dodges asteroids. And the 'Dax' effects of spotted skin and shoulders romping under a fur blanket with her man can set to stun as well. As Sisko and all husbands know, there IS no choice here. Save the wife, save the world.

Retrospect

** (2 stars out of 5)
While buying the ship a new gun, Seven of Nine and the Holographic Doctor become suspicious of the suspicious weapons dealer. Seven attacks the man, Kovin, for banging into her slightly.

Voyager's Doctor quickly tries to help with his new Psychology For Dummies software. He recovers or possibly gets Seven to dream up a scenario wherein Kovin stole and weaponised her ever-ubiquitous nanoprobe-laden blood, then wiped her memory.

Is the bad guy a bad guy? Is there any recourse? Are we on a witch hunt or acting from righteous indignation? Is there a difference?

When Kovin starts to feel hounded, he runs and then shoots and then all his guns blow up and kill him. Although this makes a compelling argument against using the cannon they bought from him, it answers none of the questions previously posed. Our pair of new humans feel some ill-defined remorse and the ship flies ever onward.

In retrospect, "Retrospect" feels like a good effort and a huge waste of everyone's time. Save only for a rather useful moral: be careful how you act on what you think you remember. Or, if you prefer: save your budget for better stories.

Honor Among Thieves

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

Meanwhile, in Neo Tokyo, humans snort death sticks, Dopterians skulk, and a Steve Buscemi-looking alien called Flith is stealing lunch from a take-out machine.

It's a world with back alleys and pants pockets. What is this, the 22nd Century? No, it's some urban decay called Farius. It's like Finnea Prime but without the charm or proprietary author's rights. Here, Orion Syndicate underling Bilby has a darling picture of his Federation-looking family somewhere that's green. And he talks like a man who's only three days from retirement!

Irish Tinkerer "Connelly" was pulled in by Starfleet Intelligence to befriend Bilby and catch a stool pigeon. Not coincidentally, DS9 is missing their Irish engineer. Huh.

Despite his humanizing geniality and his cuddly cat, Bilby casually kills a fink in front of "Connelly". Should the title be 'Honour Among Murderers'?

"Connelly" helps Bilby & The Scuzzbuckets hack the Bank of Bolius. I've always assumed Bolius is a Federation member. So, what do they have a BANK for? Money, I'm guessing? And if Farius isn't a Federation member (as seems likely), why does the Federation have jurisdiction to put Bilby into their nice, safe prisons? Well, don't think about it very hard. That's what I'm for.

When all is said and done, O'Brien's conscience hurts because his duty got Bilby killed- but on the bright side: free cat!

There's a kajllion stories in the underpants-clad city. "Honor Among Thieves" is one of them.