In theory this is an episode about protecting a semi-primitive civilization from an aggressive neighbor, but really it exists entirely to make Tuvok hate Neelix less. And as the stand in for the audience I feel like Tuvok has been pretty justified in his constant annoyance with Neelix so they contrived a scenario where Neelix manages to save the day. It is too bad they didn't find a way to make him less annoying while doing it because even when he saved the day by correctly guessing that the crazy guy trying to open the elevator door at an altitude that should kill them all from lack of oxygen was in fact not crazy and had the information needed to totally save the day. +1 for the Arnold Schwarzenegger style one liner about the guy getting thrown out the door of the elevator from 40 kilometers up.
We open on the bridge with the crew trying to blast an asteroid headed for a populated planet with representatives there to watch. Despite using one of their irreplaceable photon torpedoes the asteroid merely breaks up rather than vaporizing and two parts make it to the surface. They get a message from some guy in the surface that the asteroids are artificial and for some reason send three shuttles to get him. But of course the one with Tuvok and Neelix crashes. The two start bickering but this is the episode where Neelix is always right so he spots an orbital tether and they decide to ride it up to transporter altitude. A quick aside, they state the tether is 300 km tall, which means this planet is tiny. A tether on Earth would need to be something like 35,000 km tall to work so this is kinda extra dumb. They find evidence the meteor was guided to their planet and head for the tether but one of the guys tries to leave without them before it is ready.
On the ship they eventually figure out there is a ship that has been sending the meteors and no, it has no cloak, but can somehow hide just using its shield frequency. On the surface after much bickering they get the lift going but the dude who freaked out earlier tries to get out the door despite the super thing atmosphere saying something about the roof. Neelix somehow figures out this means there is something important up there so refuses to go on unless someone go look because he just knows something is there. So Tuvok goes since he can breath but he gets followed and attacked by one of the guys who is a traitor and can somehow breath despite not being vulcan. He knocks Tuvok off and comes inside but Neelix and Tuvok manage to knock him out the door to his death and get to Voyager just as the enemy ship is about to destroy them (no explanation of how they beam through the shields that are presumably up during the attack) and use the info on the roof the defeat the enemy despite it just being their shield frequency which they change after the first attack.
Review: They tried really hard and totally failed to make me like Neelix with this episode. I really wish they were getting ready to ditch him instead of Kes.
3 out of 10
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