I think after all the criticism of DS9 that they just sat around and waited for stuff to come to them they wanted to show from the start that Voyager was different. This felt like an attempt to make a TOS episode but with a new cast of much less competent crew. Harry Kim isn't off to a great start almost getting conned at Quark's and Janeway has already decided it is time to ignore the prime directive. I am sure that will never happen again though. At least the parts at the beginning with the Maquis worked pretty well, felt like something out of DS9 for at least a few minutes.
We begin on the Maquis ship fleeing from the Cardassians into the badlands. At first I saw Tuvok on board and was pretty sure he wasn't Maquis, which is in fact correct. They get away but run into some sort of energy field thing and we cut to a prison in New Zealand. Janeway is there to recruit Tom Paris. It seems Paris was involved with the Maquis and she is hoping he can lead her to the ship we saw in the opening. It has gone missing and her security chief is on board. There is a brief stop at DS9 where we learn from Harry Kim that they are warned about Ferengi at the academy which Quark considers racist (which it is) and tries sell him the junk for that reason. Paris shows up and points out the rocks being offered are worthless and the two make their way onto the ship. They meet the doctor who I am pretty sure never even gets a name so you know his days are numbered. Next Paris and Kim head off to meet the captain and we learn Kim is an even more raw recruit than was apparent.
They get under way and arrive at the badlands but before they get to do anything else they hit the same energy field and are flung 70,000 light years to the other side of the galaxy. The ship is in rough shape and the unnamed chief engineer has been killed, and even worse, the warp core is about to breach. But for some reason the sirens aren't going off all over as Janeway makes her way down to fix it. She tries a risky procedure which manages to save the day. In the holodeck we meet the EMS for the first time, but he doesn't have long to interact as the entire crew are beamed away to a strange platform in space they saw when they arrived. They find themselves in a rural setting that their tricorders easily detect as a holodeck type creation. After messing around with the locals Paris and Kim find that a barn is the center of power but get into a tussle with the locals. Eventually with no real change they are invited into a chamber where they find the Maquis crew and Tuvok on tables being probed with needles. They disappear again and now they are the ones being probed.
They wake up three days later back on the Voyager and Maquis ship only Kim and Torres are missing. Janeway contacts the Maquis captain Chakotay and he agrees to work with her to rescue their missing crew. He beams over with one more Maquis and Tuvok who promptly reveals his true loyalties. But luckily for Chakotay it wasn't a trap so he and Janeway beam down to the holodeck farm along with Paris. They meet an old man who rambles about a debt that can't be repaid. Cut to Torres and Kim in some sort of hospital with strange lesions. Torres fights get guards and gets knocked out by some sort of sedative/stun beam. On the ship they figure out (you can literally see it happening so it shouldn't be rocket science) that the space platform is shooting pulses of energy at the fifth planet so they decide to stop by. They pick up space scavenger Neelix along the way and he agrees to help in exchange for water.
They beam to the planet and encounter hostile near savages who are super impressed with the ability to replicate water. It seems they don't have the crew, but they know that there is another race, the Ocampans, who live underground. But they are weak and only live 9 years so the surface savages aren't really interested. They have an Ocampan woman who they seem willing to trade for water but Neelix freaks out and shoots the water contains and they escape with the woman who is of course Kes. On the planet Torres and Kim decide to work together but before they can really do anything some locals come and help them escape. Kes helps Janeway find holes in the defense grid around her people and with her help they manage to beam down. The locals don't want to offend the Caretaker, but they still totally agree to help.
They also at some point figure out that the Caretaker is both a living entity on the platform and that it is dying. It shuts down its energy transmissions to the planet an starts blasting the energy channels closed. Paris and Neelix manage to catch up with Torres and Kim and help them escape before returning for Janeway and Chakotay who were behind for no apparent reason. Janeway goes back to the platform and talks to the Caretaker who admits he is dying and that his reason for kidnapping Torres and Kim was that he was hoping they would be compatible for reproduction but they weren't He also says he is destroying the platform and their means to getting home so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. But apparently it doesn't work because he dies first and the savages from the planet show up with powerful ships and a desire to take over the platform. Chakotay sacrifices his ship to stop the savages and they all agree to stick together on the voyage home. Even Neelix and Kes.
Review: Lots of stuff happened but it didn't really come together all that well. Trying to cram in a scifi story of explorers devastating a planet and feeling guilty ended up feeling kinda silly and rushed which is too bad. Not Encounter at Farpoint level of questionableness, but not a great start.
4 out of 10
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