The closer to modern times Star Trek gets the more they try to use actual science words instead of techno-gibberish, and honestly it is driving me nuts. TNG would have just called this a spacial anomaly and I would have been able to put up with that, but making it a straight up singularity with an event horizon makes the gibberish insultingly bad. Also god damn I am already getting sick of Neelix. Kes is so far a lot more tolerable. Her suggestions actually make sense and she has been established as a caring person. Neelix meanwhile is only super self centered and obnoxious at all times. It seemed lazy on the writers part to give Janeway access to all of Torres' records from the academy. I know they say something about having stuff for research into their backgrounds, but that seems like a bit too much. And if they do have it, why did Janeway not know about it when she talked to Torres earlier?
We open with the consequences of Torres breaking the nose of one of her colleagues in engineering. Chakotay takes over from Tuvok and tells Torres he is considering recommending her for chief engineer in a bid to get her under control. Next they are in the briefing when Neelix and Kes barge in and demand to be considered senior officers. Kes has a good idea of turning some cargo bays into hydroponics facilities to save power and Chakotay mentions making Torres chief engineer but they are interrupted but the ship shaking. They rush to the bridge and find that while they were in briefing whoever was in charge flew them straight into a black hole. They try to not call it a black hole but use every other term consistent with that explanation so it is clearly a black hole. There is another ship there and they hail to offer to help but can't understand the reply. Chakotay calls Torres in engineering and she has some dumb plan to make a super tractor beam to drag the other ship out but it fails, destroys their power relays, and pulls them into the even horizon (even though they are clearly already inside since they can see the naked singularity but whatever).
They decide to flee from the situation ("going to get help") but find they are back where they started. They try it again and return back to their original position. Torres comes up with a plan shield their sensors from the distortion (what???) and it works. They realize the ship they are trying to save is them from the past or the future or something (the writers couldn't figure it out I would guess so they just made Janeway criticize anyone who points out how silly it is as "not understanding temporal dynamics). They also somehow figure out that they need to find the original opening and fly out, but they need the best pilot they have! Paris volunteers but Janeway tells him he is needed to pilot Voyager so she goes. This gives her alone time to give Torres a pep talk and the two start getting along. They open the hole in the event horizon (?????????) enough and fly back to the ship. Paris flies them out despite the opening not being big enough by punching or something and Torres gets the chief engineer job.
Review: I don't hold Trek accountable for being scientifically accurate, but this episode hurt more than most. Also the whole conflict over Torres being chief engineer seemed kinda forced. Even if I hadn't seen it before it was obvious main character lady who was central to the last episode was going to get the job, not new to the show and barely seen older engineer guy with a broken nose.
4 out of 10
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