4-14 Message in a BottleI thoroughly enjoyed
Message in a Bottle. It was fun, action-packed, emotional and suspenseful. All you could want in an episode, really. The highlight was of course the banter between the Doctor and the new improved Emergency Medical Hologram, Mark II, played by Andy Dick. Their witty dialogue and oneliners had me laughing so hard. It's surprising that the comedy worked considering that the topic was rather serious - Voyager's first chance to communicate with home. The more somber reflections will have to wait until the next episode.
I'm a fan of the Romulans, so naturally I liked seeing them here, even if they were rather one-note. Having their plan of capturing an experimental Starfleet vessel, the USS Prometheus, thwarted by two holograms was perhaps a bit unbelievable, but who cares? It was fun, especially as the two EMHes just winged it.
Even the scenes on Voyager were quite funny, like when Harry Kim tried (and failed) to make a replacement EMH, or when Seven remotely electrocuted the Hirogen because "he wasn't responding to diplomacy". That kind of independent action on her part is something Janeway ultimately will have to deal with. The episode also got us a first look at the Hirogen, a new threat to Voyager, and now probably a bit ticked off at them.
I only have two minor beefs with this episode. One, if Voyager couldn't even get a small text or even voice message 60,000 light-years across the alien relay network, then how is it possible to send the vastly more complex and larger holographic program that is the Doctor across? And the second is that they really couldn't have been communicating with the Alpha Quadrant. The Prometheus was close to Romulan space, and that is located in the Beta Quadrant. That's still much closer to home, but it seems the writers didn't want to confuse viewers not up to date on Trek stellar cartography.
I'll give
Message in a Bottle a well-deserved grade of
9 out of 10.
4-15 HuntersHunters is rather like two episodes. The first half was really a necessary follow-up to
Message in a Bottle. Using the same relay network the crew are able to receive letters from home, from family and friends who up until now has thought of them as lost. As Chakotay puts it, it must be agonising for many who finally have moved on, to now learn that they are in fact alive, but still 60 years away. This poignant reflection clouds the joy of finally being able to communicate with home.
Different crewmembers react differently, and that's good to know. Janeway learns that her fiancé Mark has married someone else. Tom Paris really doesn't want a message from his estranged father the Admiral, until he does. But he gets to have a nice scene about it with B'Elanna. But the most devastating news is that the Maquis are no more. They've been wiped out by the Dominion (as we've learned on
Deep Space Nine) and all that's practically left of them are now on Voyager. I wish the show would've delved into this more. B'Elanna has a very strong reaction, but I think Chakotay's reaction, or should I say lack thereof, didn't serve his character well. He didn't even talk about it with Janeway, instead he comforted her about the loss of Mark.
Then there's the second half which deals with Tuvok and Seven getting captured by the Hirogen we saw in the episode before. (And in the process of that, another shuttle was lost, the twelfth one, but who's counting?) The Hirogen are somewhat threatening due to their size and relentlessness, but fairly uninteresting as a species. All they do is hunt and collect trophies of their prey, much like the Predators of the Predator movie franchise. They look better though. Or like the aliens that hunted Tosk on
Deep Space Nine. Still, they're better adversaries than the Kazons, but I wouldn't want them as the main bad guys for too long.
It's too bad but perhaps inevitable that the relay network would get destroyed when the singularity imploded at the end.
Voyager wouldn't quite be
Voyager if they kept being in comm range of Starfleet Command.
I liked
Hunters well enough to give it a grade of
7+ on my 10-graded scale.
4-16 PreyPrey is the inevitable culmination of the conflict between the differing outlooks of Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine, an argument that Seven won handily in my view. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A nice tie-in with the previous episode title,
Prey shows us a couple of Hirogen hunters getting more than they bargained for when they decide to pursue a stranded member of Species 8472, a hunt that continues on Voyager. While the Hirogen are a fairly uninteresting species, Trek veteran actor Tony Todd (mostly familiar as Worf's brother Kurn) manages to lift his character above mediocrity.
Since both hunter and prey are hostiles Janeway's decision to help the member of Species 8472 is odd indeed, and Seven realises that: "A lesson in compassion will do me little good if I am dead." And thus she flatly refuses to help and in the end she saves the crew by beaming both hostiles onto an Hirogen vessel. This makes Janeway angry and she revokes a lot of Seven's privileges.
I must say I really liked the final discussion between Seven and Janeway when Seven, correctly in my mind, pointed out that Janeway punished her because she wasn't thinking like Janeway, and for not becoming more like Janeway. This after having been the one to encourage Seven to become an individual, but who now is frightened by it. To this the Captain has no answer, and I'm thankful for the show to not shove Janeway's view down on our throats. It also helps that Seven had been right. Finally someone standing up to Janeway's self-righteousness.
The visuals suffer a little bit from not too convincing CGI from the late nineties, but Species 8472 crawling along the hull of Voyager looked good. Once inside the ship, not so much.
A fun part was the Doctor, of all people, trying to learn social skills to a recalcitrant Seven, and Paris saying to the bragging Hirogen that he once tracked a mouse through a Jefferies tube.
I'll give
Prey a grade of
8- on my 10-graded scale.