Extreme Risk

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Tom Paris presents his design for a bigger, badder shuttle called the Delta Flyer. Everyone leaps on this like it wasn't a pointless make-work project to give a nation's Ship Nerds little hard-ons.

Well, except B'Elanna. Not getting her jollies from spaceships, she's turning off the holodeck safeties and risking her life for thrills. Pshh. Girls!

Why does she do this? Oh, in a not-terribly-organic character development, she has survivor's guilt or clinical depression or something vague which wasn't a problem for her before or since. Sort of the death wish equivalent of Sulu suddenly getting a new hobby.

Because Voyager insists on spreading Borg technology on everything (even their breakfast bagels), a modified probe attracts the attention of the Malon. Those Dumpster Divers follow it head-first into the empty swimming pool that is a gas giant's gravity well.

A Suicide Season Late Entry! Can Torres survive where the Malon became runny radioactive smears? Well, they didn't have Ship's Counsellor Chakotay!

"Extreme Risk" casts Tom in a pretty bad light. I mean, his girlfriend is amping up the self-harm and he hasn't noticed because he's giving his warp-speed mistress bigger tail fins? Makes the EMH look pretty ineffective, too. Guy cures DEATH but suddenly he can't handle a chemical imbalance? Complaining out of the way, the performances outshine the writing, so it's not all bad.

Mortal Coil

***** (5 stars out of 5)

In which Neelix dies and is revived by Seven of Nine's Do-Anything Mystical Magical One-Size-Fits-All Nanoprobes. However, the story and the acting is so good I would forgive it this. I would forgive it nearly anything.

Struck down on a shuttle mission during the Talaxian holiday season of Prixin, Neelix gets high on life and sings Wookie Life Day carols with Carrie Fisher, who also gets high. Sorry, I'm thinking of something unrelated.

After a record-breaking period of death, (18 hours) Neelix is resurrected with a bloodstream full of Borg. (Would now be a good time to regrow his other lung? Just asking.) In fact, this is my favorite use of Seven of Nine so far: as the well-intentioned genie who brings you back to life whether you'd rather or not. Florence Nightenborg also mentions that the mighty Kazon were 'unworthy' of assimilation. Apparently Locutus' assertion that the Borg "wish to raise the quality of life for all species" only applies to species that don't suck.

There's a two year old blonde in Neelix's life again, and THIS time he's not dating her. Ensign Wildman's daughter Naomi trusts our hero to drive the monsters away and tell her a bedtime story. He relates the tale of the Great Forest; a beautiful glade at the heart of the Talaxian afterlife, where all your loved ones wait for you.

Until today, this idea gave Voyager's Chef/Ambassador enormous comfort. But after 18 hours, he didn't see any of his moonful of dead kin anywhere. In fact, it's not looking promising for the afterlife at all. In another of my favourite moments for Chakotay, the first officer guides Neelix on a vision quest. But although his dead sister speaks to him: it's only a hollow mockery from a crumbling skeleton.

And it's going to take more than visions for Chakotay to talk Neelix down when he wavers on whether his renewed life is worth living at all. It's going to take a story that needs telling and a child that needs tucking in.

"Mortal Coil" was a profound emotional experience. Astonishing stuff from Ethan Phillips and Bryan Fuller. Thanks, Space Hedgehog! Thanks, Pushing Daisies Guy!