2-13 PrototypeWhen you introduce robots in science fiction, what usually makes or breaks a story is their appearance. Unfortunately for
Prototype, their extremely simple and corny look breaks it. They look like guys in suits with some cheap masks spray-painted with silver, more at home on a Captain Proton holo-novel than on a modern Trek show. It was impossible to treat them seriously.
Too bad that this had to be a B'Elanna centred story, since I rather like her and think she deserves better material. She's an accomplished engineer and her scientific curiosity is rather infectious, but she's also saddled with way too much technobabble.
It turns out these robots are the Cylons of the Delta quadrant, having annihilated their makers and now intent on procreation and warring each other. That last bit was a nice twist but it doesn't save the episode.
I will give
Prototype a grade of
2 out of 10.
2-14 AlliancesI was pleasantly surprised with this episode that finally dealt with an issue
Voyager should have dealt with long ago. Alas, it too little too late and that is why the attempt at building an alliance failed. For this we have the strictly rule-bound Janeway to thank for.
There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with building alliances, especially when you're in such a serious predicament as Voyager is. The Kazon may not be ideal partners, but they (or at least some of them) might have been at an earlier stage, before Voyager got a bad reputation I the quadrant. Here the Trabe might have worked better, especially since it was obvious the Kazons weren't ready. But Janeway throws a hissy-fit after the Trabe ambush at the "peace" conference, very reminiscent of
The Godfather Part III, and that was that.
OK, I get that she was angry at their deceit but can she really afford to be? Sometimes you just can't pick and choose and have to settle for the lesser or two evils. But in the end she feels she has to lecture the command staff about the benefits of federation principles, but no one looks really convinced.
Janeway acted very inconsistent in this episode. First she defended her splendid isolation argument, even flatly stating she'd rather destroy the ship (at a crewman's memorial service with scared and grieving friends and colleagues no less) only to do a 180 degree turn and seek alliances. Then she dissed Maje Culluh because of his sexism, torpedoing that, but still going ahead with a conference. She shouldn't lecture anyone!
Still, I liked the political maneuverings and found the Kazon/Trabe background story fascinating. Even if I don't like the Kazons it does explain why they behave like they do. But it is hard to feel sympathy for them.
Even if an alliance with the Trabe would have been beneficial, one has to wonder what kind of actual firepower they could contribute with. Their firing through the conference window was wholly inadequate. Most Majes survived. Don't they have torpedoes or something that could have flattened the building (once the Trabe governor had beamed away)?
Finally, I don't think they ever recovered the shuttle Neelix used, and therefore they lost a fourth shuttle.
Alliances gets a grade of
7+ on my 10-graded scale.
2-15 ThresholdOh my, I don't know where to begin.
Threshold is arguably the worst episode of
Voyager, possibly of the entire franchise. What was Brannon Braga smoking when he came up with it? But I have to admit that sometimes it's so ridiculous that it's funny, in a sad and twisted sort of way.
Tom Paris travels at ludicrous speed and mutates into a lizard that has lizard babies with the also mutated Janeway! Wrap your head around that one!
There isn't much point in naming all the abject stupidities in the episode, but let me mention a few. First, you cannot break the warp 10 threshold. It's mathematically impossible. In Trek warp 10 is an asymptote on the warp scale, you can never reach it. You can come as close as you can to infinity at warp 9.99999...etc. but not 10.
Also, it defies belief that this revolutionary breakthrough could be accomplished by some younger officers in their spare time, stranded on a ship with dwindling resources, when no one else has before. Paris, Torres and Kim are good, no doubt, but come on!
And once again Trek makes a mockery of the concept of evolution. Evolution is just a way species adapt to changing circumstances. It cannot be predicted by looking into the DNA, much less be speeded up by travelling at infinite speeds. Only after the fact can you theorise about what happened. Besides, Paris and Janeway didn't as much evolve as they devolved, which in a way sums up what happened to
Voyager in this episode.
The cure was one of Trek's more unbelievable insta-fixes™. Just shower them with a hefty dose of antimatter and, voilà, lizards no more. If it's that easy, then why don't they all travel at warp 10, get home, and then just dose everyone with anti-protons? But wisely the showrunners decided to just ignore the implications of this episode, as it has been more or less excised from canon.
I'll stop here and just say that
Threshold doesn't deserve a grade at all. It gets a big fat zero. It's even worse than
Elogium, which got the other zero, so I suppose I could say that that episode was a
0+, or 0.33.
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